hours and hours

from Susan S:

The worst part about the hours and hours of project making and coloring is the neglect of basic skills that will be needed for high school.

Somewhere around the end of 7th grade, I realized my son could barely hold a pencil or pen for more than a couple of sentences. There was no flow to his writing. It was just torture for him. I thought I was done with afterschooling only to realize we had to start all over and get him caught up.

Even in a class like social studies, he was expected to write a couple of things in a notebook, but then illustrate the page. Of course, he'd been typing since the 4th grade, so he'd forgotten cursive. But it wasn't just cursive he had forgotten. He was even unsure of certain letters in block form.

When I would receive his middle school journal at the end of the year I would notice basic words misspelled consistently, thus searing the wrong spelling into his brain. It was a nightmare to go through all of that and get him straight.

It took a good 4-5 weeks of writing summaries, bios, etc. every other day just to get him to form the letters automatically and quickly and without fatigue.

I have no idea why they do this. I do sense that they get pressure from upstairs to have a certain amount of project work. I imagine if they didn't have extended response and essays on the state tests, they'd probably not have them write at all.

Like math facts, they believe that these things just take care of themselves.

vendor watch: Race Around the World

It's Learning at the Extreme!

it's a plot

Drop everything and watch this now:

Learning in the 21st Century

(a Barry G find)

Nice to know that Digital Natives "prefer graphics before their text." I suppose preferring graphics before text would have nothing to do with the fact that today's Digital Native was taught to read using balanced literacy and sight words.


talkee-talkee

What means enduring understandings? [slide #37] My district's new 20-page Strategic Plan is chock-ful of Enduring Understandings, so I'd like to know.

online jigsaw puzzles

Until 5 minutes ago I had no idea there were jigsaw puzzles online.

This could be bad.