Latin vs Spanish

Please tell Juan to recycle the plastic.

or

The centurion bravely slaughtered the barbarian.

choose one

Well....we may laugh (ha ha!) but, judging by events unfolding here in my own leafy suburb, twenty-five years from now we'll look back fondly on the days of Please tell Juan to recycle.

Twenty-five years from now schools will be teaching the critical languages and nothing but.

phinally!

Have I mentioned Ed's a Phillies fan?

woo hoo!

Frederick Education Reform - for your school board, paper, & PTSA

I think the PowerPoint presentations at Frederick Education Reform are probably the single most important and most potentially effective grass-roots reform documents I've ever come across. These parents have managed to pull the whole thing together: not just the math wars but the reading wars and the education wars, too.

I'm going to forward several to my school board, the PTSA, and the local newspapers.

Seven Styles of Learning

I can't believe it.

My son came home today and told me that his (seventh grade) science teacher talked to them about seven styles of learning. I guess this was to justify having them draw pictures of science definitions. My son already has about 100 3 X 5 index cards with pictures from sixth grade science. I suppose I should be happy that they expect them to learn definitions, and that the seventh grade science teacher will not grade the artwork, but this adds to the book dust cover he has to draw for language arts and the diorama he has to do for social studies. Only in math does he have regular homework. All of the other classes have projects. (He has math with me, but that's another story.)

Linguistic learner
Logical/mathematical learner
Spatial learner
Musical learner
Bodily/Kinesthetic learner
Interpersonal learner
Intrapersonal learner

"Everybody has a preferred learning style. Knowing and understanding our learning style helps us to learn more effectively. Through identifying your learning style, you will be able to capitalize on your strengths and improve your self-advocacy skills."


Did you ever notice that they don't let kids decide on and use whichever style works best for them. Everyone has to do the artwork. Everybody has to work in groups. What about the poor intrapersonal learner who is no good in art and likes to work by himself? Tough s***. What about my son, who is extremely good in music. What the heck does that mean?

The school hands out questionnaires about this each year and I just throw them away. I try to ignore it, but this learning style formality is really getting annoying! Parents can't say anything about it because that would be questioning their competence.

Of course, drawing a picture for a definition should help one with memorization, but one can always trade speed for understanding. It's not as if they are covering more material using these techniques. They are slowing down. It took my son a lot more time to draw the science pictures last year (20+ minutes each) than it took him to memorize the definition.

Even if you believe that each child has a preferred learning style, schools really don't care. Everyone does art and works in groups.

How does it all stack up?

A parent and I recently started up a Continental Math League team at our school, which uses Investigations math.

The response?  Enthusiasm from students and parents; skepticism from teachers.

Specifically, about "stacking." (Today's word for how we used to add, subtract, and multiply numbers by placing one number on top of the other.)

Kids love it. And not just the ones on our team. As as friend writes:

When I showed one of my sons how I had learned addition, i.e. the "stacking" method, he was very impressed. "Wow, that's so cool! That works great! I wonder if my math teacher knows about this?" was his innocent comment.

Yes, she does, and she doesn't like it. At least if she resembles the teacher who approached me after math practice yesterday and recounted the dismay she felt when she caught one of her students stacking numbers, thus abandoning the more "meaningful" and "faster" way he used to solve problems.

My co-coach and I tried to explain that the Continental Math League numbers are big enough, and random enough, that Reform Math's methods aren't faster and more meaningful, but inefficient and confusing. It's one thing to add 48 and 39 by reasoning that:

48 is 2 less than 50, and 39 is 1 less than 40, so add 40 and 50 and get 90 and then count backwards by 3 and get 87."

But take one of the problems we did at Continental Math League practice yesterday: 825 - 267. Restricting myself to the kinds of calculation that these second and third graders are able/expected to do in their heads, here's the most efficient non-stacking method I can come up with:

The closest friendly number to 825 is 800, and the closest friendly number to 267 is 250. 825 is 25 more than 800. 250 is 10 more than 260, and another 7 gets you 267. 10 plus 7 is 17. So 267 is 17 more than 250. So subtract 250 from 800. Well, 800 minus 200 is 600, minus 50 more is 550. Then subtract 17 from 25 by counting up from 17. Seventeen plus 3 more is 20 plus 5 more is 25. 3 plus 5 equals 8. Add 8 to 550* to get 558."

*By this point in the problem, how many people remember what they should be doing with this 8?

Anyone with a more efficient non-stacking method for subtracting 267 from 825 (no calculators allowed!) is invited to share it here.

(Cross posted at Out in Left Field).

Sum Swamp--fun adding and subtracting

We recently ordered "Sum Swamp," an addition and subtraction game, from Amazon. It is helping with basic math facts, and also covers odd and even. It's a fun game, and very cute. It only has two 6-sided dice, however. I'm planning on buying two 10-sided dice to make it cover all the basic addition and subtraction facts.

There is an "endless loop" where you have to land on the exit to get out. For a shorter game, we don't make the endless loop endless. You could play with multiplication as well, and then either add the digits or for any answers 10 or over, divide by 10 and round to the nearest number.

We lost a bit of math knowledge this summer, this game will be a fun way to keep up basic math facts during holidays.

Now, if I could only find a fun DVD! Something along the lines of Leapfrog's "Talking Letter Factory" for letter names and sounds would be great. Unfortunately, leapfrog's math circus doesn't teach much, although it is cute.

21st century skills

from Susan S



That's what I call a race between education and technology.

One small answer to the engineering gap?

Johnny Chung Lee made the NYT today .
My favorite part of the article, on building an interactive whiteboard with a wii remote:

An after-school Lego robotics club for fifth graders at Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School in Williamsburg, Va., built a Wiimote whiteboard in four one-hour sessions. “Once it was done, the kids were so excited,” recalls Kofi Merritt, then the school’s computer resource specialist, who suggested and advised the project. “They recognized themselves as innovators and demonstrated the whiteboard in classroom after classroom.”

Lee provides specs and instructions for all his inventions free online. What a great way to introduce students to engineering as the U.S. engineer gap is growing.

According to Sheila Riley of the EE Times:

The population of experienced engineers is aging, he (Albert Helfrick, chair of electrical and systems engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University said. "There's a serious problem in our country with people like me: gray-haired people who could retire tomorrow," he said. If large numbers do retire, the U.S. faces a severe engineering shortfall.

Joe Sciabica, executive director of the Air Force Research Laboratory, agrees:

"We are facing a crisis in this nation," Mr. Sciabica said, referring to a loss of technical talent and experience as an aging workforce of scientists, engineers and mathematicians prepares for retirement.

"What alarms me more is that the professors to teach the next generation are also retiring," he added.

Looks like loss of quality teaching isn't just an ed school issue.

I'll take a piece of that action

…it is possible for students to construct for themselves the mathematical practices that, historically, took several thousand years to evolve…

source: A Constructivist Alternative to the Representational View of Mind in Mathematics Education Author(s): Paul Cobb, Erna Yackel, Terry Wood Source: Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp. 2-33; p. 28.

I've posted this line before, but had always drawn it from secondary sources. So I had wondered whether perhaps the authors had been misquoted.

Nope.

This is the precise claim Cobb, Yackel, and Wood are making. In these exact words.

pick one

Lynn G and I watched the debate between Lisa Graham Keegan & Linda Darling-Hammond two nights ago, and now you can, too. The last 6 minutes are worth the time.

The debate was terrific, I thought, though the fact that curriculum and pedagogy, the twin issues that have driven my own family from the public schools, were barely mentioned goes quite a ways towards explaining to me why I've become an "Independent." I put "Independent" in quotation marks because I wasn't planning to become an Independent and don't consider it a badge of honor to be one. I am a believer in two-party politics, as a matter of fact; I just don't happen to have a party to believe in.

Of course, having become a person without a party and a parent without a public school, I'm thinking maybe now's the time to morph from small-l libertarianism to the real thing.

But I think I'll hold off on that. I can't be a libertarian; I have to carry on supporting NCLB if only to be the one parent in all of leafy suburbia who does.^* It's my job.

Speaking of leafy suburbia, on the video you'll hear Linda Darling-Hammond giving a shout-out to Scarsdale superintendent Mike McGill and his strategic use of resources or some such. That is horsepucky. The secret to Scarsdale Mike McGill's success is tutors. Lots and lots and lots of tutors.

And don't you forget it.



^* Me, and the hardy band of commenters and readers around these parts.

dumb question

Does anyone know, offhand, how I post my contact info where it's easy to find?

If not, I will have to RTFM.

portfolio assessment and grade deflation

I've left a comment at Flypaper re: portfolio assessments used to deflate high achievers' grades.

Grade deflation is a topic near and dear to my heart.

questions for Lisa Graham Keegan and Linda Darling-Hammond

• Do you believe that knowledge of the liberal arts disciplines is a form of intellectual capital?

• What is your opinion of the banking theory of schooling?

• Can children whose parents are committed to providing them direct instruction in the liberal arts disciplines be served by public schools? Or must these parents resort to homeschooling or enrollment in private and parochial schools?
  

• Can you name the 7 liberal arts?

I'm emailing my questions to Susan Fuhrman at: SusanF@tc.columbia.edu

children don't like group learning

a comment left by Jane re: how did you get 3?---

I think I now understand why the first words out of my seven year old after school yesterday were "Mom, I don't want to be in any group in my class."

She is a second grader in a class with a range of skills from preK to 3rd grade. She has the 3rd grade skill.

It got worse last night when my fifth grader commented about wonderful it was that she wasn't in a group.

Where exactly was the fifth grade level math in the video?

As I understand it, teachers in the 4-5 school here are now required to teach children in groups. It's against the rule to seat the children in rows.

education debate tonight

Lynn G filled me in:

Education and the Next President

I can't for the life of me figure out why Barack Obama appears to be sticking with Linda Darling-Hammond, assuming that's what is happening. Flypaper has predicted she'll be gone, and I've been assuming the Flypaper people know what they're talking about in these matters. But perhaps not.

Here is Darling-Hammond twinkling her way through eight and a half minutes of blather re: [S]ocial and emotional learning is a crucial part of teaching the whole child. Darling-Hammond and her legions of colleagues, students, and disciples in the business world are the reason why parents like me who want a classical education in the liberal arts disciplines for their children are having to pay the Jesuits to provide one.


The word "parents" does not cross Ms. Darling-Hammond's lips.


snippets:

When you think about how you want to educate the whole child, it’s critical to be sure that you’re helping kids be able to engage with one another, understand themselves and how they think, be able to handle the stresses and challenges in their lives which are increasing all the time.

We are still struggling to get past the factory model school that we inherited in the early 1900s, which adopted age-grading so that students go to different teachers every year. ... [M]uch of the environment, particularly in big, urban factory model schools is punitive and coercive because it’s about control of large numbers of people being asked to do things that are not natural.

Interesting, that.

Punitive and coercive are precisely the words I would choose to describe public schools in which children are forcibly enrolled in emotionally invasive project-based, experiential learning activities and graded on the outcome.

[snip]

If you think about the ways we have to be functioning adults, it’s in context where we have to work in groups on hard problems that need creative solutions, that require problem solving, and it’s getting to do that work well that is really part of the major goal of education in the 21st century. So when you think about project-based learning, learning that results in demonstrations of performance, exhibitions of what kids can do in real tasks that have brought these kind of novel challenges to them to solve, you can see that when an individual student or a group of students come together to solve a hard problem to figure out how to do research how to do inquiry, how to investigate, how to put their ideas together, how to figure out which ideas have the most grounding, how to present what they’ve done, they have to do a lot of social, personally intelligent work. They have to be able to figure out how to relate to one another, how to divide tasks, how to solve problems, how to probably run into dead ends, pick up the pieces, reorient, and go in a different direction — all of that develops children’s abilities to be socially capable, emotionally capable and grounded, and, in the long run, also intellectually capable. And those pieces all come together when you’re working on project-based, experiential learning activities.

All your children are belong to us.

A constructivist approach to ratios and proportion

This is a video that purports to show how questioning can be used in teaching. In it, a teacher has a series of one-on-one conversations with a boy who is working on a math problem. I recognized the problem as coming from Connected Math. There are four recipes for an orange drink, with various ratios of orange concentrate to water. The problem is to find out, for each of the four recipes, how many cups of orange concentrate and water are required to make enough drink for 240 campers. Each camper is to have 1/2 cup.

Typical of CMP, the student in the video has received minimal instruction on ratios and proportions. What's more, the problem is a multi-step one, that requires one to figure out the total amount of cups needed of orange drink, given that of 240 campers, each receives 1/2 a cup. This is not in itself hard, but given that he has minimal instruction, it is all one big jumbled mess of a problem in his mind. He has four such recipes and therefore four problems to do, but as is evident from the first dialogue, he has mushed all four recipes into one.





This problem is not difficult to teach with a systematic direct approach. Singapore Math approaches it using bar s. As an example, if the recipe is 2 parts orange concentrate to 3 parts water, the 2:3 ratio is illustrated as follows:

[ ][ ] Orange drink
[ ][ ][ ] Water

There are a total of five parts that make up the orange drink. If there are 120 cups needed (1/2 cup for 240 campers = 1/2 x 240, which Singapore Math students have learned how to do in 4th grade), then each part is 120/5 = 24 cups, and then it is easy to see that the amount of orange drink is two parts, or 2 x 24 = 48 cups, and water = 3 x 24 = 72 cups.

It doesn't take a long time to teach this, and based on my experience with my daughter, the Singapore approach is quite effective and leads to extensions of the concept whereby students can set up ratos between amount of orange concentrate and total amount of orange drink.

When you view the video it is apparent that it is taking this boy quite a while, through quite a few one-on-one dialogues with the teacher. Personally, I don't know of many classrooms where a teacher is going to have that kind of time to have a one-on-one like that.

technology I'm willing to pay for

laptop smackdown

synchronicity alert: I just bought a new Neo for Andrew a month ago. I liked it so much I kept it for myself & gave him my old AlphaSmart. Now he has two & his teacher can keep one at school, thus eliminating the daily scramble to locate the thing & put it in his backpack before his bus arrives at 7:12.

Be sure to click on the photos of kids at the bottom of the screen.

re: photos of kids at the bottom of the screen ---- I am constantly amazed that school districts apparently want students to spend more time on the internet than they already are. Of course, when you're being heavily lobbied by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, then I suppose it's inevitable you're going to be buying 4000-dollar SMARTBoards & 1000-dollar laptops instead of 219-dollar Neos.

After all, when the business community, education leaders, and policymakers want you to do something, you better do it.

how did you get 3?

excerpts:

In any classroom anywhere you go, you’re going to have an incredibly broad range of kids, socially, academically, all across the spectrum. And so how does a single person as a teacher, as a manager, teach 20 to 30 kids in a single classroom when that ability range is so wide. I personally believe that the social skills and more importantly the students building social skills to help them work together to talk about math, to explain their thinking, to offer help when another student is struggling, and just as importantly for that child to be able to accept help — that’s a really difficult part of that equation. All of those skills are part of the social arena that we’re working in and without them I don’t know how you could teach a classroom with such a broad range of abilities.

[snip]

5th grade girl: “How did you get 3 when if you did the half of 8? That’s 4.”

5th grade boy: “I don’t know how I got 3.”

[snip]

Say we provide a math problem. Many students can find the answer very quickly. But can they explain the process that was happening in their mind? Can they explain it to somebody that doesn’t understand it? Take a really gifted kid, for example, and you have them try to explain a multiplication problem, a very basic one. They know the answer like that. And try to have them explain it to somebody that it doesn’t come so quickly to. It’s an amazing activity to watch, to see them think through the process. Oh well I know that 3 x 4 is 3 groups of 4 or 4 groups of 3 and here’s how I see it and here’s what it looks like visually and that’s how I get to this answer. It’s an entirely different skill to be in tune with your own thinking. And so in order to do that in the classroom, those social skills need to be in place.

brought to you by The George Lucas' Educational Foundation

(If the video doesn't load, you can watch it at edutopia.)

update:

Here's the Singapore Math 4B placement test, which is the test kids take after completing 4th grade. (pdf file)

Here's the second part of the 1st question on the test:

1. (b) Arrange in increasing order.

5/8 0.602 3/5 0.66

I really want to see that one done with plastic squares.

OK, here's the first word problem on the test:

6. A meter of lace cost $0.40. Mrs. Jacobs bought 5.5 m of lace. She used 1.3 m to make a dress. She used the rest to make 4 cushions of the same kind.
(a) How much change did she receive if she paid for the lace with $10?
(b) How much lace did she use for each cushion? Give your answer in meters and centimeters.

Compare that to the problem tackled by the 5th graders in Alaska:

Mike has $8.00. Kelly has twice as much as Mike and Joe has half as much as Kelly.

The teacher's sole intervention, in the video, is to ask one of the students:

“Do you know what that word twice as much means?”

tripping up the gifted kids

It seems to be a big win for the teacher, figuring out a way to trip up a "gifted" kid on a simple multiplication fact. I wonder if this teacher forces the gifted students to define "twice" for their less able peers along with teaching them multiplication?

Of course, the idea that a 5th grade child who can answer "What is 3 x 4?" just like that is gifted may be the central Decline and Fall moment in this video.

Which is coming to us from George Lucas.

Parents have to get their kids out of the public schools if they can. Sauve qui peut.

Parent Involvement

Parental involvement has real staying power as a catch phrase in education-speak. Possibly because it assumes that parents can always be counted on to take the blame (or blame each other) for most anything going wrong. But there are a few schools that take parent involvement seriously, and could possibly serve as role models. One of the local public schools in my town has taken a few simple steps to move past rhetoric; and I offer it as an example.

1) last May, a Parent's evening was held for parents of 6th graders. The principal, VPrinc, and Guidance Counselor answered questions and gave information. I found this typical and not terribly helpful -- a lot of general information on middle school organization, lockers, classes, blah blah blah. Nothing specific on curriculum, which is what I'd like to hear about.

2) a week before school starts -- a picnic on the lawn for families then about an hour for kids and families to wander the school, find the classrooms they'd be in, lockers, talk to administrators. The event ran past the scheduled end time, but no one was hurried to the door.

3) the second full day of classes -- parents are invited to come immediately after classes to meet teachers for an hour in the cafeteria (although it ran late, again, and nobody threw the parents out). Every teacher was there, all were willing to discuss curriculum and expectations

4) Two weeks into the year -- an open house is held in the evening. We got copies of our child's schedule and followed their day class to class for 2 hours. Every teacher was there, curriculum was discussed, some teachers had detailed syllabi available.

5) 3rd week of classes -- a morning parent open house is held -- from 7:30 to 9:30 parents are invited to attend classes with their child. Parents park all over the lawn. The Principal takes pictures -- the more parents the better. He's told us repeatedly at the first 4 events how he wants to blanket the front grass with parent cars. Yes it's disruptive, but he wants parents to see what their kids are actually doing in class.

The point of all of the events at various times of the day make it easier for parents to find at least one time when they can make it in to the school. The principal asks parents to come to school. He makes it easy to get them there by making the times flexible. No topic is off-limits.

Having sat through two classes with my daughter's teachers (with students present) has given me a far greater understanding of what is happening in my child's school day. I may not like everything going on there, but there is no doubt that transparency is more than empty talk. There are things I will continue to fight to change (still too much emphasis on the child taking responsibility for their own learning), but with transparency and an attitude of openness towards parents, I feel I am involved (for the first time ever in this school district) WITH and NOT AGAINST the school my child attends.

advertisements for myself

A starred review in Publishers Weekly!

Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson. Houghton Mifflin, $26 (288p) ISBN 978-0-15-101489-7
Grandin (Animals in Translation), famed for her decades-long commitment to treating livestock as humanely as possible on its way to slaughter, considers how humans and animals can best interact. Working from the premise that “an animal is a conscious being that has feelings,” the autistic author assesses dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, poultry, wildlife and zoo animals based on a “core emotion system” she believes animals and humans share, including a need to seek; a sense of rage, fear, and panic; feelings of lust; an urge to nurture; and an ability to play. Among observations at odds with conventional wisdom: dogs need human parents, not alpha pack leaders, and cats respond to training. Discussions of why horses are skittish and why pigs are arguably the most intelligent of beasts—raccoons run them a close second—illuminate the intersection of people and more domesticated animals; chapters on cows and chickens focus more generally on animal welfare, particularly the horrific conditions in which they are usually raised and slaughtered. Packed with fascinating insights, unexpected observations and a wealth of how-to tips, Grandin's peppy work ably challenges assumptions about what makes animals happy. (Jan.)

PW will run an interview with Temple in the 10/20 issue.




(I've just noticed that Jay Mathews' new book on KIPP is listed on the same page!)