What Philadelphia 5th graders should know how to do

I recently came into possession of one the Philadelphia School District Parent Teacher Brochures, which breaks down the goals that each Philadelphia School District student should be able to meet by the end of each grade level.  Since I'm homeschooling my 5th grade daughter, I was particularly interested in the goals for fifth grade. And I was shocked, shocked, to find myself more baffled than enlightened after reading through these goals.

The language arts goals are all about process, purposes, and genres, with a developmentally inappropriate assignment thrown in in the form of a research project:

•Continue to build a reading, writing and speaking vocabulary
•Read to learn new information
•Read a wide range of stories, books and magazines for enjoyment
•Understand a problem or conflict in stories or books and talk or write about an appropriate solution
•Make connections between stories and texts that they have read and the world around them
•Tell and/ or write a summary that gives the main idea of what they read and the most important details or events
•Complete a research project including a written report
•Write stories with several paragraphs
•Write poems, plays, and reports

Not a word about specific reading skills (vocabulary level, sentence complexity, making deductions and bridging inferences within the context of the text) or writing skills (grammar and punctuation, sentence construction, paragraph construction).

As for the math goals, most are vague ("compute" and "find the relationships"), easy (locating numbers on a number line; comparing numbers; sorting shapes), and emphasize verbal explanations over mathematical performance. Four out of the 13 goals are about data and probability. Here the developmentally inappropriate goal (especially given what isn't covered here) involves algebra:

• Compute and find the relationships using whole numbers, fractions, and decimals
• Locate positive and negative numbers on a number line (integers)
• Explain to you what prime numbers, factors, multiples and compositie numbers mean
• Compare numbers (equal to, greater than, and less than)
• Collect, organize, display, and analyze data in a variety of ways
• Find mean (average), median (middle number), mode (most frequent) and range (difference between largest and smallest) of data
• Predict or determine all possible combinations and outcomes, such as, "How many outfits can be created with six shirts and eight pants?"
• Calculate the chance of a simple event happening
• Use a variety of methods to solve for unknown quantities in simple one-step algebra equations (solve for x)
• Sort polygons according to their properties and angles, such as triangles, rhombi, and parallelograms
• Define and compare perimeter (distance around) and area (amount covered inside) of shapes
• Understand properties of a circle
• Explain how they solved a math problem in their own words.

Not a word about which computation skills the child should develop, what sorts of numbers, fractions, and decimals the child should be able to do computations on (perhaps only the "friendly" fractions and decimals), and what level of computational fluency the child should have. Not a word about multiplication tables, long division, repeating decimals, ratios and percents, and multi-step word problems.

Turning to science, only one substantive topic is mentioned (solar energy) and goals pertaining to it remain vague ("build an understanding;" "recognize"). Most the goals pertain to process rather than achievement, many of them involving developmentally inappropriate activities that wrongly assume that children can function as little scientists:

• Develop skills that will emphasize the five senses while doing science
• Use prior knowledge when making observations
• Make predictions and hypotheses based on observations
• Design investigations with a control and one or two variables
• Gather, organize and display data independently
• Build an understanding of how solar energy is transferred
• Recognize that the sun is the main source of energy for people and they use it in various ways
• Design and conduct experiments with variables. Students should be able to explain cause and effect
• Study the relationship in an ecosystem that shows the relationship of an organism to its environment
• Conduct hands-on investigations to discover and understand their world
• Record observations in science notebooks

It would seem that, "goals" aside, the Philadelphia Schools are avoiding any commitment to help your 5th grader increase his or her vocabulary, reading level, sentence construction skills, or computational fluency with "unfriendly" numbers; or learn any scientific content other than a few vague propositions about solar energy.

(Cross-posted at Out In Left Field).

ms-teacher on history & science

re: I remember nothing

As a result of NCLB, many school districts have chosen to focus on reading & math, meaning that emphasis is placed on test skills that will ensure higher test scores.

This has meant that in school districts such as where I teach, elementary schools have virtually eliminated both history & science. When students enter middle school, those who continue to score below basic or far below basic usually have a semester of science & a semester of history, where they are expected to read from on grade level (or above) expository text.

It is no surprise to me that our students are not performing well in history. Until we start emphasizing the value of all subject matters, even when they are not tested, you can expect that schools will continue to deemphasize those subjects that they don't believe boost their test scores.

Teachers hate it & yet, our hands are tied.

Science Teachers Should Know The Content They Teach

The National Council on Teacher Quality finds the level of science content knowledge demonstrated by teachers in many states to be unacceptably low. Connecticut received the lowest score possible: a red light. You can read more at my blog post here:

Connecticut's High School Science Teacher Certification Found Wanting

authentic 21st century teaching tool

The Inner Life of the Cell

BioVisions at Harvard University

More here.

metamorphosis

Remember the adults' explanations of metamorphosis they fed us during kindergarten to second grades? Somehow we were content with talk of how the caterpillar forms its chrysalis, "goes to sleep" and wakes up a butterfly.

Metamorphosis seemed to be taught on a really funny "spiral". I don't know how frequently other American elementary schools do it, but for 3 consecutive years my classroom teachers would run the growing-Monarch-caterpillars-on-milkweed experiment, with a multitude of variations (like growing several in the same lifebox).

Then they don't touch metamorphosis for 10 years (no, I'm not counting Animorph novels) and you rediscover its study in college in some neurobiology or developmental biology class.


Why is the popular image of evolution that of primates slowly transforming to humans? (Not to say how Lamarckian this picture is.) The picture to capture children's minds with is that childhood storybook of the tadpole and the frog.

It's intuitive to children. The frog starts out as a tadpole because it is an amphibian, and amphibians once came from a fish-like ancestor who had to come onto land. Every time the tadpole grows legs, loses its gills, and gains lungs, it is re-enacting that ancient evolutionary event. A shocking argument to first-timers -- and yet, they are pulled in -- because when you really think of it, some more pieces of the puzzle of the world suddenly seem to fall together.


As a child, I remember two thoughts about metamorphosis:

1. Wow, it's really cool! Flightless animals can gain functional wings! I wonder if I can learn a way to do it myself. Being able to fly would be pretty cool.

2. Wouldn't it be easier to just start out a butterfly?


I can't remember what my teacher said about 2), but I seem to have the impression that my inquiry was cruelly quashed. Luckily 1) was there to continue my interest in the life sciences.

Instead of cutting out paper butterflies or learning the umpteenth reading strategy, I wonder if it's possible to try out the following in the lower grades:

i. some more details you know, about the transformation. Young children learn what a heart and a liver is, as well as some of the details of gestation. It really expands your mind about what an individual organism is, when you learn that the caterpillar practically gets dissolved by its own pool of digestive juices, and a butterfly is reassembled from the soup of nutrients by special stem cells. (Kid-friendly explanation here.)

ii. some attempts at a why. It would be nice. It almost gets glossed over in the lower grades (or in high school, for that matter) that a caterpillar happens to be particularly good at eating, and a butterfly happens to be particularly good at mating and laying eggs in faraway places. I believe one of the comments to the Youtube video above is, "Why can't the strangler fig grow its own trunk?" It's even missing in Singapore's PSLE science syllabus -- you learn about complete and incomplete metamorphosis and the finer details of exotic life cycle archetypes, from spinning wind-borne angsana fruit to cockroaches -- but nothing about why it's advantageous to be so "weird".

iii. a greater exhibition of the plasticity of life. Fundamentalist resistance to evolution in school continues to persist for several reasons, some of which are because of the inflexible picture of life children get very early -- cows will always moo, dogs will always bark, the roles of each are fixed and immutable. Look at that cat! It's so different from a bird -- what ancestor could it possibly share with it?

iv. Some updates on cellular bio would be nice. I remember two pieces of "info" from childhood science classes: the cell is the basic building block of life. (Whatever that means.) Genes are blueprints. I do think children should deserve better than that. If you told them instead, that cells are tiny materials and machinery builders capable of producing more of themselves, and that genes were more like instruction "how to" manuals that cells read, a lot of things would make more sense. (A caterpillar doesn't "die" per se while its being digested in the chrysalis because some cells still carry its instruction manuals.) It would also have saved me a lot of the, "BUT where is the blueprint for our arms, teacher? What does it look like?" questions.

But we could also reject the idea that teaching content is teaching reading, and teach children how to make glittery power point slides instead.

A possibly good development for science education?

This week's Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper at the University of Pennsylvania, reports on a five-year, $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences to Penn and several other institutions to establish a 21st Century Center for Cognition and Science Instruction.

According to the Daily Pennsylvanian, the consortium will collaborate with "over 200 Pennsylvania middle schools to study how the mind receives, processes, stores and retrieves knowledge and how to improve middle school science curricula."

The Daily Pennsylvanian quotes Andrew Porter, the new dean of Penn's Graduate School of Education, as saying: "It's highly unlikely that the U.S. can continue to produce leading scientists and engineers without providing a stronger science education to our children, particularly in the critical middle-school years."

Besides Penn (both its Graduate School of Education and its Institute for Research in Cognitive Science), the other institutions involved are the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, Research for Better Schools, and the 21st Century Partnership for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Education.

Does anyone know anything about these other institutions--in particular, how empirically based vs. dogma-driven their past ventures have been?

Total Lunar Eclipse - Ringside Seating Available

Don't miss the total lunar eclipse on Wednesday evening. Observers anywhere in the Western Hemisphere are promised quite a gorgeous display. If you miss it, you'll have to wait quite a long time for the next one -- 2010!

In the Americas, the eclipse happens during convenient evening hours on Wednesday, the 20th, when people are up and about. In the time zones of Europe and West Africa, the eclipse happens during the early-morning hours of Thursday, the 21st.

Earth’s shadow will totally engulf the Moon from 10:00 to 10:52 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, or 7:00 to 7:52 p.m. Pacific Standard Time [ ]. The partial phases of the eclipse last for about an hour and a quarter before and after totality.

Find out more about the total lunar eclipse at Sky and Telescope here and here.


February 20th's Eclipse of the Moon
All of the Americas will have ringside seats . . . weather permitting.
by Alan M. MacRobert
Sky and Telescope March 2008

Should There Be A National Panel For Science And Math?

Somewhere on Capitol Hill today, hearings were held by a Science and Technology subcommittee on the lagging performance of US students in math and science. A news report about this hearing can be found at Medill Reports.

The proposed council, comprised of representatives from federal and local agencies as well as school districts, would work independently of other federal programs to create national guidance on science, technology, engineering and math curriculum.

Education officials stated that they think a national council is unnecessary and will just create more bureaucracy. But --

The committee’s top Republican, Rep. Vernon Ehlers of Michigan, acknowledged that the increased federal role would be controversial, but said agreement on national standards is essential for the sake of consistency among school districts. American families move on average every four years, he said.

“At the top of the list (of competitiveness) are small, homogenous countries that have the same curriculum throughout the country,” Ehlers said of the leaders in science and math. “There’s a real urgency to this.”

Singapore, anyone?
I wonder if anyone has told him that those small homogenous countries are willing to sell us their curriculum?

Robert Gropp, director of public policy for the American Institute of Biological Sciences, said in a telephone interview university teachers are often frustrated by “hodgepodge” of what local schools are teaching. He expressed hope that this decades-long debate may finally move forward.

A national council could make university-level teaching easier, since national standards could provide a more consistent pool of math and science skills among incoming freshman students.

National standards are a great idea, as long as they are set by mathematicians and scientists that have some idea of content. Input from educators should be encouraged.

the sun, the moon, and the stars at instructivist

Incredibly cool post at Instructivist!

C. & Ed are going to love it.

While you're there, be sure to read his post on the NY Regents History exam, too. The suffragette question reminds me of Celebrity Jeopardy.

gene expression

terrific letter to the editor in the TIMES today:

Autism researchers are only beginning to assemble a wealth of observational details into a coherent theory of what causes autism.

Different subsets of these observations can evoke competing testable hypotheses (which are healthy for science) and competing ideologies (which are not).

As your article notes, the vaccine idea has been epidemiologically tested and not borne out. It seems time to move on.

I worry, though, that this vaccine controversy has steered the field away from environmental causes in general. As a brother and uncle to two people with autism, I am keenly aware of the role of genetics. But genes can affect responses to the environment, and the environment can influence gene expression, making the genetic-environmental dichotomy a false one.

One truth our work has taught us is that the perturbations of brain development that lead to autism are usually the product of multiple interacting causes. Surely autism research has room for all of these, and for all of us.

Matthew Belmonte
Ithaca, N.Y., June 18, 2007

The writer is an assistant professor of human development at Cornell University.

Ed says this is the clearest and most succinct statement of the relationship between genes and environment he's seen.

Off Topic -- Corpse Flower Blooming At UConn

For all you botany enthusiasts -- the Titan Arum, aka Corpse Flower, is beginning to bloom tonight at the UConn Storrs greenhouse. This is a really cool event -- after growing the plant from seed for 10 years, it first bloomed in 2004. The bloom last about 2 days. It will probably be years before we see another. These are the largest known flower-like structure in the plant world. They also have an incredibly nasty smell.

I've been watching this unfold for the past two weeks, ever since I happened to chat with the manager of the UConn greenhouse at a children's science expo.

The greenhouse website is updating frequently as the bloom slowly opens. I'm hoping to get the kids in the car very early tomorrow as there can be long lines to see this thing happen.

The manager told me that there have been 3 blooms in all of New England (ever). All 3 have been grown from seed from the plant at UConn.

The greenhouse will be open all night tonight if anyone just can't sleep and wants to get an early peak (sniff) at this magnificent beast. To see more, the Greenhouse Website has lots of information.