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DrugDealsAndThePythagoreanTheorem 01 Dec 2005 - 00:32 CatherineJohnson


OK, I've just had one glass of Life-Extending red wine with my friend Kris.

Which means I'm sure I must be misreading this article in the TIMES, which seems to be about a drug-dealing geometer:

DRUG dealing has not done James Robbins much good, unless you consider his current 6-to-12-year stretch in New York prisons a sign of success. On the possibility that he may want to try a new line of work when he gets out, here's an unsolicited thought:

Apply to the city's Department of Education. It might want someone with experience to talk to students about the importance of learning mathematics. Mr. Robbins, whose specialty is the Pythagorean theorem, could be especially helpful in this regard.



Maybe I really am living in a parallel universe.




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AlgebraIn8thGrade 01 Dec 2005 - 03:45 CarolynJohnston

Catherine and I both have, as a goal for our (currently 6th grade) sons, that of getting them through 9th grade algebra (algebra I) in eightth grade.

It seems this is a minimal requirement for getting them into calculus as seniors in high school, which these days seems to be in turn a prerequisite for getting them through programs that are mathematically challenging in college. I don't mean math programs... I mean tangentially mathematical programs, such as economics, engineering, computers, and the sciences.

We've both gotten some pushback for this. Why would Catherine, for example, whose son was tracked (by 3rd grade!) to an ability group that would have precluded calculus in 12th grade, insist in 6th grade that the rules be changed for him?

And why would I want to track my high-functioning autistic son into a higher-level math class than his grade level would indicate? (I've still got that fight ahead of me, by the way -- I fought and lost the fuzzy math fight for him, so I pulled him out of a fuzzy curriculum into a one-on-one 'traditionalist' curriculum, and at some point we'll have to track him back into the mainstream).

Here's what happens when an entire school system puts their kids on the fast-track -- a whole lot of pushback, and often from the parents.

comments...


BiggestBlunder 01 Dec 2005 - 20:53 CatherineJohnson




b01444.jpg



I find it hard to choose just one.


review here




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ChinaMeetsNctm 01 Dec 2005 - 21:00 CatherineJohnson


via joannejacobs, word that China has apparently adopted curricular reforms based on NCTM standards, the idea being to increase Chinese students' creativity.

More jobs for the locals.


question

Does no one inside public education read cognitive science?

Is there some law?

Why are cognitive scientists and the tiny band of people who read and write Kitchen Table Math the only people on the planet who seem to have made the connection between creativity and domain knowledge?

I ask you.




Doug says...

Well, us and nearly every successful private-sector employer in the world. Other than that small group, though, it's a pretty tightly held secret.

True.


a professor in China creates a test for scientific creativity

The reason this professor has created a test for scientific creativity as opposed to just plain creativity, is that creativity is domain specific:

There is a general consensus that domain-specific knowledge and skills are a major component of creativity. Alexander (1992) and Amabile (1987) emphasised the need for specific domain or discipline-based knowledge and skills for creative thinking. This issue was also addressed by Findlay and Lumsden (1988) and Mumford, Mobley, Umlman, Reiter-Palmon, and Doares (1991) who defined being knowledgeable as having a knowledge base that is conceptually well-organised and for which retrieval is fluent and efficient in relation to demand in a given problem-solving or creative thinking situation. Other researchers (Albert, 1983; Feldman, 1986; Gardner, 1983) also concluded that creativity is domain specific. As Barron and Harrington (1981) suggested, more domain-specific aspects of divergent thought may underlie creative productivity. According to his research, Sternberg (1996) concluded that the correlation coefficient of creativity between different areas is only 0.37. We conclude that the scientific creativity of secondary school students, a kind of domain-specific creativity, cannot be measured by tests designed for other content areas or age groups.


AKRI: Cognition:Creativity

I know nothing about this outfit, but they've collected some terrific one-liners on the nature of creativity. (My sense of the research on creativity is that no one really knows what creativity is. Reading through this page, however, I'm thinking people have made some progress since I last looked through the research.)

First revelation: an American invented brainstorming. Alex Osborn. The 'quintessential adman.'

Classic. Of course it would be an American who invented brainstorming, and of course it would be an American working in advertising. Americans are a creative lot. That's why we came up with fuzzy math, I'm sure.

Left to their own devices, Asians would never have invented multiple-solution-math. They would have just kept beavering away at their worksheets and equations and taking over the engineering departments of U.S. institutions of higher education.


Statements about Creative Thinking (AKRI):

"The ability to defer judgement on solutions"

"Prefer legislative (rule creation) rather than executive (rule following) or judicial (rule assessing) style".

"Expertise and commitment distinguish the creative individual from the non creative." Weisberg 1988 Problem Solving and Creativity. In Sternberg (ed).

"A desire for originality"

"Failure to conform to social pressure"

"Tolerance of ambiguity"

"Personal style of a creative thinker: Openness to new ways of seeing Intuition

Alertness to opportunity A liking for complexity as a challenge to find simplicity

Independence of judgement that questions assumptions

Willingness to take risks

Unconventionality of thought that allows odd connections to be made

Keen attention

A drive to find pattern and meaning

Plus the motivation and courage to create."

Frank Barron 1988 Putting creativity to work. In Sternberg (ed) The nature of creativity. pp 76-96 New York. Cambridge University Press.

"Creative Individuals have abilities in Problem Finding (detecting gaps and deficiencies in contemporary knowledge) and Problem Definition (seeing how to frame a problem in a way that makes its solution more easily attainable)." Complex Problem Solving: Principles and Mechanisms: Bryson 1991 In Sternberg & Frensch (eds) . pp61-84. Hillsdale

"On the Motivational Side, Deep Commitment is required. Not least because it is needed to acquire sufficient domain knowledge."






comments...

CommentsFromKtmGuest 01 Dec 2005 - 21:52 CatherineJohnson


I was discussing this bliki last night with a friend, who is a former teacher with experience in elementary, middle, and high school, and with both IEP and non-IEP classes, and she says she also preferred teaching the IEP adaptive behavior students. Not only was there a well-defined plan with exactly specified goals for each student, but also she was dealing with the same classroom management problems as the regular ed teachers, except with only five students and an emergency button on the wall!


Absolutely. Christopher's brilliant 5th grade teacher told me she was asked to teach the Phase 4 class and she opted, instead, to teach Phase 2, which was children one year below grade level. Many (perhaps all) of them had IEPs, which meant the school was required, by law, to teach them to mastery.

She said a lot of them were terrified of math. Some would even start crying. Every single child in her class scored above 80% on her first big chapter test, using the same book the rest of the school was using.

Steve said one day that all students should have IEPs. I've often felt this way myself. Now that I've read Engelmann I formulate this slightly differently. I'd like to see the law changed to state that all children are entitled to be taught to mastery (leaving it to the Engelmann's of this world to figure out what that would mean as a matter of public law and policy).

As things stand, the entitlement to a public education does not mean an entitlement to learn the content being taught.

It means an entitlement to be exposed to that content.

inchworm.gif


I need an emergency button on my wall.


did your parents afterschool you?

Another comment:

I don't recall either of my parents (1 Ph.D. in chemical engineering, 1 math major) helping me with my homework, ever. Well, okay, there was the one time in 10th grade where my mom helped me set up the electric typewriter so I could type up a 10-15 page term paper, but other than that, they had no idea what I was studying, what was assigned, or when it was due.

I did every single one of my shadow boxes and other projects by myself. (And the teachers could tell, I'm sure.)

This bliki has made me think about the elementary math education that I experienced in school, and I have come to realize that I don't remember a thing of the instruction -- because I wasn't paying attention at all. I don't think I ever had to do math homework at home until high school, because I was doing it in class while the teacher was instructing, or I did it the previous week by working ahead in class while the teacher was talking, or whatever.

I do, however, remember how to do fractions, decimals, long division, algebra, and calculus. I can even take square roots with a paper and pencil, something I taught myself out of an 1899 math book my mom found at a church yard sale. I am a little rusty at geometry proofs, but I can do geometry puzzles like the ones in the Singapore 6B entrance exam.

(Okay, okay, they encouraged and indulged my math mania by buying me math books and letting me read ahead in their high school and college texts. So sue me... that's not really helping with my homework. :) )


This comes up all the time.

Nobody I know had parents spending hours hauling them bodily through math and English language arts.

And yet most of us learned as much if not more than our own kids seem to be learning. I talked to Temple (Grandin) about this yesterday; she learned all fraction operations to mastery in the 6th grade, and she's used math all her life in her stock yard and meatpacking plant designs. This was a developmentally disabled child learning fractions to mastery in 6th grade. (I'll have to ask her how much time her mother spent filling in the gaps. I'll bet not much.)

What happened?




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MyContractToImproveChristophersGrades 01 Dec 2005 - 22:07 CatherineJohnson


OK, I need help.

Christopher came home with this "Report Card Evaluation Contract to Improve My Grades," which he has filled out and signed.


contractimprovegrades.jpg


I'm going to write a contract for his teachers to sign.

If I get really ambitious, I'm going to write a contract for the principal and superintendent to sign, too. (The superintendent, by the way, has created a 'Wellness Committee' open to parents and members of the community. I guess we're branching out from character education.)

I could crib the whole thing from War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse, but that wouldn't be as much fun.

What items should be on a teacher/principal/administrator contract to improve student grades?

I'll definitely have a line about formative assessment and teaching to mastery.

I also need a line about giving clear assignments and making sure students understand assignments, about not telling an entire class their short stories are 'horrible' and 'don't deserve to be published in a book,' and about not saying 'Stop making all that noise, you're not retarded.'

What else?


UPDATE 11-29-2006: Rejecting this "contract" turns out to have been a good call. We learned this fall that Christopher's grade 6 math teacher was instructed to hold down the number of As in her class, which she did. This directive runs counter to standard practice in New York state, which is to grade students in Honors and Accelerated courses up slightly so as not to punish them for taking more difficult classes. Parents were not informed of this policy, yet we were asked to sign a "contract" stating that our child was "responsible" for his grades.


my contract to improve Christopher's grades
a Grade Contract that makes sense
the book
Grade Contract for married people
climb down
Smartest Tractor saves the day
KIPP Academy contract





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MathReformIn1923 01 Dec 2005 - 23:36 CatherineJohnson


"Math education is a stool that needs three legs," says Richard Askey, professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. "Good problems, technical skill, and conceptual understanding are all necessary. If even one of these legs is weak, you don't have a good program."

By Professor Askey's estimate, the last time the US instituted a reform in math that strengthened all three "legs" was 1923. All of the various reforms in the years since, he insists, "emphasize one leg or at the most two, but never all three."

source:
Changing America's Path to Reform Christian Science Monitor, May 30, 2000



Does anyone know what reforms were instituted in 1923?


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Good Intentions Are Not Enough (pdf file) Richard Askey




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JohnSaxonAndFrankWang 01 Dec 2005 - 23:52 CatherineJohnson


Incredible story of Frank Wang and John Saxon:

For Saxon president Frank Wang, getting good at mathematics was the answer to a personal crisis. In 1970, a doctor and school officials came to the conclusion that he had "neurological impairment" and could not be educated. This diagnosis was a great blow to his parents, recent Chinese immigrants to the US. Wang had his own solution: He noticed that what counted for intelligent in his school was an ability to do mathematics. This was the key to convincing school officials that he had a mind worth educating, he reasoned.

"I didn't want to live out this prophecy," he says. "I really wanted to prove to the doctors that I had intellectual capacity. And getting good in mathematics looked like the way to do it."

He began by studying past New York State Regents exams in mathematics - quietly, on his own time, one question at a time. It was tough at first, but he just continued working problems until he understood the principle, then moved on to another topic.

Finally, he told his eighth-grade algebra teacher that he already knew all the material in the course. The teacher sent him to the principal, who sat him down with an old Regent's exam (he'd already studied) to test the boast. Wang scored a 96.

"He asked me how I had learned all of this. I shrugged my shoulders and said, 'I don't know. It just came to me.' I outright lied, but it was such a delicious feeling. All of a sudden people's thoughts of me changed from a disabled child to someone with potential," he says.


The fact that experienced educators believed this child when he told them an entire year of eighth-grade algebra 'just came to him' is the most alarming part of this story.


Saxon

Wang met Saxon founder John Saxon after his family moved to Norman, Okla., where his father took up a position as professor of mathematics at the university. Saxon needed a research assistant, and 16-year-old Wang volunteered.

"He just struck me as a very eccentric fellow, but someone with a very strong and powerful sense of mission. He had very grandiose plans at that time. He thought that he had a better way of teaching mathematics, and the world should know about it," says Wang.

Saxon, once dubbed "the angry man of mathematics," was a retired Air Force pilot who flew 55 missions in Korea and later taught electrical engineering at the US Air Force Academy. Brash, outspoken, and never one to dodge a fight, he started his own publishing company to challenge the math orthodoxy of the day.

Smaller is better

Saxon's concern wasn't that math books were too full of pictures, chatter, and not enough problem-solving. (That came later.) In the early 1980s, Saxon argued that children should not be expected to learn math in big thematic chapters. He argued that math needed to be taught in smaller increments, with lots of practice and reviewing.

It turns out, that's exactly how Wang had taught himself mathematics. In the end, the youngster hired to punch papers and do errands contributed so much to the book that Saxon acknowledged him in the preface - and later invited him to take over his company.

"The Saxon pedagogy was incremental development: Teach in small pieces, continual review of those increments, and frequent cumulative testing. There would be no asking: Is this going to be on the test? Every Saxon test was cumulative, and every test gave kids a chance to redeem themselves," Wang says.




Saxon in Oklahoma

In 1992, Saxon offered to donate his program free to seven Oklahoma City elementary schools. A district follow-up found Saxon students outscored a control group of non-Saxon students in every math category on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Asked to cite weaknesses of the plan, some teachers said that lessons were too time-consuming.

Much of the evidence in support of the Saxon method is anecdotal, but compelling enough to have forged a strong following among some school administrators and parent groups.

Test scores at Falconer Elementary School in Chicago, for instance, went up so dramatically that the central office suspected its students were cheating. Students retook the test and scored at the same level. (76.9 percent of its third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders scored at or above national norms on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Prior to the use of Saxon only about a third scored at that level.) Another example: Saxon students at Riviera Elementary School in Kelseyville, Calif., one of the state's poorest districts, now outscore students in affluent Laguna Beach schools.



Someone needs to write a book about Saxon Math.


our hero

John Saxon was one of the first to oppose the recommendation of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to integrate calculators into math classes. The 1989 NCTM standards that urged students to "construct their own understanding" gave Saxon textbooks a new target.

"John Saxon used to say that understanding more often than not follows doing rather than precedes it," Wang says. "If I'm going to teach you how to drive, I don't lecture you on the theory of the internal-combustion engine. I get you behind the wheel of the car and drive around the block."

He adds: "We're not saying we're against critical thinking. But we feel that creativity comes from a well-prepared mind. What we want to give every child in America is the ability to work to develop a well-prepared mind."






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ConstructivistsAndFormativeAssessment 02 Dec 2005 - 01:41 CatherineJohnson


So I've been sitting around thinking formative assessment is the answer to all my problems, and meanwhile the constructivists are way ahead of me.

From Chapter 1 Learning and Assessment, in Making Formative Assessment Work by Kathy Hall:

Introduction

The idea that learning is a mechanistic process of breaking down knowledge into smaller units for pupils to digest mentally is now obsolete. We now know that:

  • learning occurs through active intellectual engagement on the part of the learner;

  • it is always in a context and involves constructing meaning; and

  • it involves linking new knowledge with previous understanding.

These three characteristics of learning are well explained by von Glasersfeld (1989) in an essay entitled, 'Learning as a constructive activity', by Wood (1988) in the book, How Children Think and Learn and by Bruner (1996) in The Culture of Education.


Another one bites the dust.




vGlas.jpg

Ernst von Glasersfeld




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TalentedAndGiftedMathEd 02 Dec 2005 - 05:29 CarolynJohnston

Catherine's been talking lately about her class, with 5 kids in it, on Singapore Math. In a recent comment, she wrote:

If I had to bet, I'd say that all 5 kids are GATE in math. They're amazing.

But two of them are way out in front -- and they're super-competitive about math, always champing at the bit for more, bigger, and harder problems. One of them is always shouting, Bring it on!

The other 3 are super-talented, but quieter, and that mix is tough!

The bring-it-on kid needs to accelerate RIGHT THIS MINUTE. He and his friend, for sure.

Actually, all 5 of them need to accelerate. They really are incredible. It's astonishing working with these kids.

Not being a teacher of young children myself (other than my own), and living in a town where every other parent has a kid who is gifted and talented, I tend to get a bit jaundiced about talented and gifted education. But it sounds to me as though Catherine's kids really are gifted (if she says they're amazing, then I believe it), and really do have some needs that their regular math classes are not meeting.

And so, if I'm going to start believing in TAG kids, that brings me to seriously ponder the question: what really should gifted and talented education in math be?

Gifted and talented education in history seems pretty obvious to me; you go more into depth with the kids. You talk about more abstract notions at a younger age; you have the kids read the more challenging and interesting material. They cover the same material at greater depth.

But because math education is cumulative, there are two different possibilities to consider: acceleration and enrichment. Acceleration in math usually means sticking a kid into a higher grade class; enrichment all too often means giving a kid (as Catherine put it) a tesselation coloring book to fill in while the other kids "discover multiplication". Acceleration is probably necessary; enrichment (you could argue) in math is a boondoggle, especially if done like this. TAG teaching in mathematics seems at once less rewarding, and more error-prone.

But then we have a class like Catherine's: simple, elegant, and successful. Catherine is doing Singapore math with a bunch of 5th graders who may not be conceptually ready for algebra, but who are certainly ready for bar modeling -- that being Singapore's secret for getting kids thinking algebraically in the early grades. And they are eating it up. Personally, if I were faced with the question of how to enrich a bunch of intellectually hungry 5th graders, I would really wonder what to do; I would certainly wonder whether supplementing from a standard Asian text would be the right approach. I would probably dither myself right out of ever doing it at all.

And, far from being just an enrichment program, Singapore has used this curriculum to pull everyone's performance up and enable acceleration for all their kids. All Singapore kids are doing algebra in 8th grade (you can argue that they do it in second!). Our kids, our typical kids, could do it as well, of that I feel quite certain.

But that still leaves my question. OK, I'm convinced; I am starting to believe in the existence of mathematically gifted and talented children. But what the heck do you do with them? And why is Catherine's normal-for-Singapore curriculum turning them on?

Here's a short article on TAG education in math, which I rather liked (and excerpted a portion of, below). One point it raises that I think is critical is this: TAG kids need extra attention, just like struggling kids. This is one thing, I think, that's making Catherine's Singapore class a real enrichment experience: simply the specialness, the unusualness, of Singapore math in this American setting. Catherine brings extra love to the subject. They're a bunch of very bright people, discovering this stuff together.

It is important that a teacher actually work with the students engaging them in activities that promote high-level thinking and good mathematical discourse. If students are given "enrichment sheets" to work on independently and can do this successfully, it usually means the material is NOT challenging for them. It also does not allow for mathematical discussion with their ability peers. This is so important to foster understanding and spark interest and new insights.

I conclude that talented and gifted kids need a learning community to which they feel they belong and in which they feel typical, probably more than anything else (and pretty much LIKE everyone else). Acceleration for them is necessary but probably not sufficient.

comments...


TwoDogsAndANumberLine 02 Dec 2005 - 21:11 CatherineJohnson




numline.GIF





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DougAndKenAtEdWonk 02 Dec 2005 - 22:19 CatherineJohnson


Ken and Doug have been been over at Ed Wonk, arguing about whether schools should be held accountable for student achievement.

Ed Wonk says students and parents have responsibilities, too. What can he do if a student refuses to do a simple 5-minute assignment?

This is a tough one for me, because while I'm foursquare on the side of school accountability, 'Ed Wonk' is a teacher, and teachers are getting mulched. (Doug and Ken both say this themselves several times in their comments.)

I'm at a loss as to what one individual teacher can do.

On the other hand, Temple made an enormous difference for animal welfare working inside the meatpacking industry. The odds were against her. She was a woman in a macho industry when women weren't welcome, she was a free-lance designer with no management experience or power, and she was autistic.

Her autism was her strength. Half the time she didn't even know people were mad at her, or laughing in her face. One time she gave a talk to a cattleman's gathering and thought it went well. Afterwards a member of the audience came up to her and said he felt really bad about the way everyone had treated her. She didn't know what he was talking about.

She just kept trying to make things better for animals. Today, 30 years after her career began, she's done it.

What can one teacher hemmed in by bad policy, lazy and/or damaged students, and dysfunctional and/or demoralized parents do?

I don't know.

My feeling is that the solitary individual has a responsibility to try to make a difference, and then, after he fails, to keep on trying.

Which I imagine is what Ed Wonk is doing.




speaking of which

Ed is good at academic politics. (Synchronicity moment. I typed the word 'Ed' and the phone rang; it was Ed. He's in Paris.)

Background: our Superintendent and Assistant Superintendent are drafting a policy, to be voted on by the school board, to make it impossible for me to teach Singapore Math in the after-school program. Under new policy no parent will be allowed to teach any academic course that might conceivably overlap or conflict with content being taught in school; hence no Spanish class in the after-school program, either, though a class in Chinese may be allowed.

Apparently, this is the way it's done in Ardsley. [ed.: Ardsley?]

Ed says there's a fundamental principle at stake, which is that the administration should not regulate parent activities. He told me to call the PTSA president and ask for an invitation to speak to the executive board. I did, and I'll be talking to the board next week. Meanwhile the President says she wants to show the Singapore Math material to her husband, who has a Ph.D. in computer science, proving the Jayne Mansfield dictum that all publicity is good publicity. (It was Jayne Mansfield who said that, wasn't it?)

My points:

  • the administration should not oversee parent activities

  • the administration should support any and all academic enrichment programs parents are willing to supply

  • the after-school program should be expanded to the middle school (the PTSA isn't allowed to set foot inside the middle school)

  • the administration should write and submit to the school board a formal declaration of gratitude to the PTSA for offering innovative and cutting edge academic enrichment courses in its world-class after-school program


I probably won't press that last point.

On the other hand, maybe I will.


what can one person do?

Which brings me back to the question of what one person can do.

When it comes to complaining about a lousy math curriculum, one person can be a gadfly.

A gadfly, or a thorn in the side, or both.

I've done a bang-up job on that front, it seems.

What one teacher can do inside a classroom is a tougher question.

I wonder what Siegfried Engelmann would say. Could you create your own formative assessment/Kumon-like series of tiny little in-class lessons that work with undereducated, burned-out 12-year olds?


gadfly.jpg



what is the student's responsibility, anyway?

After allowing Christopher to sign a document acknowledging full responsibility for his grades (I'll be recanting via email tonight, now that I've given myself a day to cool off) my question is: what is his responsibility?

What is mine?

By which I mean.....what does the school have a right to expect from us?

It's crystal clear to me that Mrs. Roth is out of line. I've now talked to other parents in the class, and on the subject of Mrs. Roth they could be my long-lost twins. She's mean, parents say, and she doesn't teach. Moms are spending hours on the internet, pulling grammar lessons, pulling information on how to teach persuasive writing, pulling this, pulling that.

Worse yet, more than one of the children in her class believes that Mrs. Roth specifically hates him or her. These children don't perceive her as uniformly disliking everyone (she probably doesn't dislike anyone; she's just enjoying her caustic performance humor, which was on display Back to School night. She's an entertainer, and her jokes are all at the children's expense.)

So, no, the children don't think Mrs. Roth is just a mean person who dislikes all the children.

They think she dislikes them personally. They spend two class hours a day with this woman.

There's something new and bad practically every week. Actually that's not true; it's not every week. It just feels like every week.

This week's debacle was the 'Feature Story.'

Apparently, the Feature Story was supposed to be a persuasive essay.

Christopher didn't know that, and I didn't know it, either. Another parent told me Mrs. Roth did give the kids an assignment sheet, which I didn't see. I don't know what happened to it.

Is this a breach of responsibility on Christopher's part?

I'm going to say no. At this stage of the game, it's Mrs. Roth's responsibility to find out if her students know what the assignment is.

The fact that she handed out a piece of paper isn't good enough. I want formative assessment on the question of: Do these kids know what I've asked them to do?

So Christopher didn't do the assignment correctly. He wrote a very nice explanatory paper on school violence (what could have prompted him to develop an interest in school violence, I wonder), laying out one or two reasons for school violence, and two possible solutions. Then he told which solution he preferred, and why.

The paper was short, well-organized, and well-written.

Mrs. Roth thought it was terrible, and told him so, loudly, in front of the class.

Then she accused him of 'not trying' and 'not working.'

He was humiliated.

I've had it.

Number one, no child needs to be humiliated in front of the class.

Number two, where is the instruction?

Christopher has no idea what a persuasive essay is, yet he was asked to write one. Meanwhile I, the parent, do not hear the words 'feature story' and think 'persuasive essay.' I have yet to see a single constructive or informative comment written on a paper Christopher has turned in to Mrs. Roth; I have yet to see any comment written on any paper at all. When Mrs. Roth came back from 6 weeks out with pneumonia, she told the class, "Your stories are horrible. They don't deserve to go in a book."

And that was that. My story is horrible; next time I'll try to write something not horrible.

I have yet to see any sequence of writing instruction: rough drafts, revisions, 2nd revisions, anything at all. [correction: Christopher says they wrote a rough draft in class and handed it in. And that was that. Mrs. Roth provided no feedback..]

So....I guess I'm going to have to take back my question.

In theory I'm interested in what Christopher's & my responsibilities to the school may be. In reality, I'm far more riveted by the question of what the school's responsibility is to us.

But I am interested in any thoughts all of you have on the subject of student and parent responsibility in middle school.




comments...


WhyPublicSchool 03 Dec 2005 - 05:45 CarolynJohnston

On the Doug and Ken take on Ed Wonk thread, JD left this comment:

I remember reading a comment left on a different site that alleged that the public school was, in essence, an institution whose main purpose was to remove the burden from parents of the work involved in educating their children.

I always thought the main idea of public school was to educate those children whose parents could not or would not educate them, for whatever reason.

Early on, in our agricultural years, there must have been a lot of parents who thought it was a waste of time to have perfectly able-bodied farm kids spending most of their day at school. But that didn't matter: the law had decreed that their kids would get educated. Did educators at that time assume that kids would have the whole-hearted involvement of their parents at home -- or that their possibly illiterate parents would be able to help them with their homework? I doubt it very much. So the argument that kids can't be taught unless their parents are involved is beside the point; these are the conditions that schools were intended to function in.

Whether it's possible to teach kids against their will and without their parents' support is perhaps unsettled, but the original intent of public school was definitely to educate kids whether their parents liked it or not. So really the question public schools ought to be trying to answer is this: what's the best we can do for these kids if there's no support at home: how do we ensure they learn anyway?

I'm now going to say something very politically incorrect: unwilling children CAN be made to learn (at least when they are young).

We've educated Ben against the most incredible odds; he had Asperger's, severe Tourette, and severe inattentive ADD. They don't come more unwilling than Ben; there was a time when you could stick your face an inch from Ben's, yell at the top of your lungs, and get only a Buddha-like smile in response; not because he had an attitude, but because he had gone someplace where he couldn't hear you.

We got through to Ben mainly by keeping a close eye on what was working and what wasn't, incentivizing him heavily*, and changing tactics if something wasn't working (that's behavioral analysis). You concoct a set of things you want the kid to learn, and you concoct a set of incentives, and you keep an eye on both to ensure that the goals are being met, and that the incentives are working. Schools have kids for around 6 hours a day; that's a lot of time.

But I feel for Ed Wonk and for all teachers, because schools are very hierarchical and autocratic; teachers can't necessarily do what they know will work.

* i.e., we bribed him shamelessly.



comments...


AleksIndividualizedLearningAssistant 03 Dec 2005 - 19:47 CatherineJohnson


Nick's Mama sent an email asking about ALEKS.

Does anyone know anything about it?

All I know about it is that a blogger named Parent Pundit used it with her daughter with good results.


slipped my mind

hmm

I see that back in May I was planning to 'check out' ALEKS right away.

Obviously that didn't happen.

Time for me to read Getting Things Done again.

If I can find it.


David Allen has a blog

This could be interesting.

update 6-30-2006: David Allen doesn't have a blog.


good grief

Now here is a photo I would not publish on my blog if I were David Allen.

David Allen needs a blog consultant.

I think by now most of us here at ktm could set up shop as blog consultants.


if you're killing time?

Why is David Allen providing me with suggestions on how to kill time this weekend?

Wouldn't I be killing time reading David Allen's blog because I have a problem with killing time?

Think and discuss.


a parent's experience with ALEKS
ALEKS Graphic
formative assessment on wheels
ParentPundit uses ALEKS to fix Everyday Math
ALEKS question
ALEKS assessment coming right up





comments...


AleksAndIndividualizedProblemSets 03 Dec 2005 - 20:11 CatherineJohnson


This is the aspect of ALEKS that intrigues me:

  • Adaptive, dynamically chosen small set of questions

  • Details precisely what the student knows

  • Constantly updated as work is completed



The idea of 'dynamically chosen' worksheets sounds good, but I wonder whether you gain anything you don't with a program like KUMON, where the worksheets aren't dynamically chosen. Saxon Math has students do the same worksheet many times during a school year, and I know from experience it works fine. You don't need a new mix of problems every time you practice.

On the other hand, even small gains in efficiency would add up over time.


formative assessment on wheels

Interesting.

Here's a link to the research/marketing paper ALEKS has posted on their web site:

ABSTRACT

This paper is adapted from a book and many scholarly articles. It reviews the main ideas of a novel theory for the assessment of a student’s knowledge in a topic and gives details on a practical implementation in the form of a software system available on the Internet. The basic concept of the theory is the ‘knowledge state,’ which is the complete set of problems that an individual is capable of solving in a particular topic, such as Arithmetic or Elementary Algebra. The task of the assessor—which is always a computer—consists in uncovering the particular state of the student being assessed, among all the feasible states. Even though the number of knowledge states for a topic may exceed several hundred thousand, these large numbers are well within the capacity of current home or school computers. The result of an assessment consists in two short lists of problems which may be labelled: ‘What the student can do’ and ‘What the student is ready to learn.’ In the most important applications of the theory, these two lists specify the exact knowledge state of the individual being assessed. This work is presented against the contrasting background of common methods of assessing human competence through standardized tests providing numerical scores. The philosophy of these methods, and their scientific origin in nineteenth century physics, are briefly examined.


Of course now I'm super-intrigued.....

This is all I need, right now. One more high-concept math-learning scheme.

Curiosity doesn't seem to kill cats, but it's going to be the end of me.


a parent's experience with ALEKS
ALEKS Graphic
formative assessment on wheels
ParentPundit uses ALEKS to fix Everyday Math
ALEKS question
ALEKS assessment coming right up





comments...


TheBarneySong 04 Dec 2005 - 00:13 CatherineJohnson


I have spent a huge quantity of my life listening to the Barney Song.

Jimmy, at 18, still watches Barney, and Andrew is obsessed. This morning when I glanced inside Andrew's bedroom I saw a small plush Barney toy standing bolt upright in the middle of the floor wearing an enormous wide-brimmed straw walking hat from Australia.

Here in my parallel universe, he looked a bit like a Canadian Mounty.

Needless to say, Christopher loathes the Barney song. He probably hasn't gone a day of his life without hearing it, so he's entitled.

Well, guess what?

I have just this moment discovered a Barney Verb Song!


Title - helping verb song
By - Beth Fryer
Primary Subject - Language Arts
Secondary Subjects -
Grade Level - 4
My students learn the helping verb list with an idea by a former student...Sing these words to the tune of the "Barney Song" - or, for those of you who don't know THAT, it's "This Old Man"!

have - has - had
do - does - did
be - am - is - are - was - were - been
can - could - shall - should - will - would - may
might - must - being
are helping verbs!
E-Mail Beth Fryer bfryer@clsd.k12.pa.us!






comments...


DescriptiveNormativeAndCritical 04 Dec 2005 - 01:04 CatherineJohnson


Now that it's become clear I'm going to have to teach Christopher how to write, I'm on the prowl for material and ideas.

I'm posting this cartoon because I'll be showing it to Christopher at some point, and I want it where I can find it.


ee-draw3.gif






comments...


IepsForEveryChild 04 Dec 2005 - 18:46 CatherineJohnson


Rereading Parent Pundit's post about her daughter's experience with Everyday Math and ALEKS, this passage caught my eye:

...they give a pretest and a posttest for the curriculum. In other words, they give the final at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year to track the learning. My daughter received a 25 at the beginning of her 5th grade year in math, but she only received a 69 at the end of the year....

Clearly, intervention was needed. In the summer at the end of 5th grade, I had her try the Aleks computer program in math, www.aleks.com. The Charter School in my town uses it, and I decided to try it for my own daughter. A tutor would have been expensive and less than optimal in this situation because my daughter does get concepts, she just needs more drill (how can most kids hone their number sense if they aren’t ever asked to multiply and divide numbers continuously), and she needs algorithms that have fewer steps so there is less possibility of error (everything that Everyday Math does not provide.)



I give Parent Pundit's school—and the authors of Everyday Math—credit for the pre- and post-testing.

My problem is: what comes next?

They give this child a pre-test and she scores 29; they give her a post-test and she scores 69.

And then......nothing.

"Clearly intervention was needed."

I'll say.

Why is intervention the parent's responsbility?

The school has failed to teach this child 5th grade math. When she takes the ALEKS test, the program tells her she knows only 21% of a typical 5th grade curriculum. (I'm wondering whether ALEKS allows people just to take the grade-level tests, and if so, how much they charge. I'll check.)

If this child were classified as having special needs, she would be entitled to be taught the content that is listed on her 'IEP,' which stands for Individualized Education Program.

Of course, in my experience the content on the IEPS doesn't get taught, either, but still.....it's there; the parent has a leg to stand on. (And in my own children's case, in fact it's extremely difficult to know what they are and are not able to learn, though I suspect Engelmann would make short work of some of the IEP meetings we've had.)

But with a typical child with normal intelligence, there's no mystery. She can learn 5th grade math in 5th grade. It's the school's job to teach it to her—and to reteach it if they failed the first time around. If that means providing tutoring or summer classes, so be it. It's the school's failure; the school needs to fix it.

This mother was in the same position I was in at the end of 4th grade. My child was failing; the problem was the school's, not his or mine. (In his case the problem was almost certainly the teacher, who I liked very much, but who apparently just could not teach math at that early stage of her career. The school didn't give her tenure, which was the right move. But children who lost a year of math in 4th grade weren't given any help or remediation. No one came to parents of these children and said: Your child failed to learn math this year, because his teacher was inexperienced and didn't manage to teach the subject to mastery. Here's what we're going to do to re-teach the material he missed.

American schools, by and large, teach for coverage.

Not for mastery.


free assessment at ALEKS?

It looks like ALEKS offers a free assessment. (I haven't tried to use it, because I'm not sure I can run the test twice on one computer, and I'm most interested to see where Christopher scores.)

If this assessment really is free, and is easy to use, it could be a useful tool in talking to teachers and administrators.

What we really need is our own simple-to-administer, at-home assessment, 'rolling' assessment tools.

I'd like to be able to send my school a report each month on where Christopher is in the curriculum.

Of course, that's another project.

report cards for the school




comments...


HistoryOfMathCourses 04 Dec 2005 - 20:54 CatherineJohnson


From A Brief History of American K-12 Mathematics Education in the 20th Century by David Klein:

The following table gives percentages of high school students enrolled in high school math courses.


Percentages of U.S. High School Students Enrolled in Various Courses

School Year
Algebra
Geometry
Trigonometry

1909 to 1910
56.9%
30.9%

1.9%
1914 to 1915
48.8%

26.5%
1.5%
1921 to 1922

40.2%
22.7%
1.5%
1927 to 1928
35.2%
19.8%
1.3%
1933 to 1934
30.4%
17.1%
1.3%
1948 to 1949
26.8%
12.8%
2.0%
1952 to 1953
24.6%
11.6%
1.7%

1954 to 1955
24.8%
11.4%

2.6%

Looks like the '23 reforms may not have been successful.


This reminds me that David Klein's paper is part of my Great Unread. I need to get to it soon.

Here's a question that springs to mind: why do we see the sharp decline in algebra enrollment?

Does David explain the steep decline in math course enrollment by a difference in numbers of students enrolled in high school?




comments...


NortonSampler 04 Dec 2005 - 22:44 CatherineJohnson


One of you (I have to find the Comment again—) left a link to the Johns Hopkins CTY Summer program, specifically to the page that lists all the courses.

All of the writing courses have posted syllabi, including the course called Crafting the Essay.

The readings for 'Crafting the Essay' seem far too weighted towards the personal essay—what is it with all this memoir writing?*—but, at the end of the syllabus, there's a list of 'Supplemental Texts' that includes this book:


NortonSamplersmall.jpg


Here's the jacket copy:

As a rhetorically arranged collection of short essays for composition, our Sampler echoes the cloth samplers once done in colonial America, presenting the basic patterns of writing for students to practice just as schoolchildren once practiced their stitches and ABCs on needlework samplers. This new edition shows students that description, narration, and the other patterns of exposition are not just abstract concepts used in composition classrooms but are in fact the way we think—and write. The Norton Sampler contains 63 carefully chosen readings—classics as well as more recent pieces, essays along with a few real-world texts—all demonstrating how writers use the modes of discourse for many varied purposes.

Wow.

Depending what's actually in the book, this is exactly what I'm looking for—and I found it thanks to ktm commenters. Incredible. Thank you.

I've mentioned that I learned how to teach writing at the University of Iowa. At the time (and perhaps still today) Iowa had one of the best freshman writing programs in the country.

We used the The Norton Reader of Expository Prose. We lived by that book. Later on I used the short version, I believe, to teach the same course to gifted middle schoolers for Johns Hopkins CTY.

I looked at the Norton Reader again the other day, and had been planning to order it this weekend....but it isn't exactly what I want.

If I were teaching a full-fledged writing course at school, then sure. The Norton Reader would probably be the book.

But I'm going to be trying to hammer my massively resistant middle-schooler into adding afterschool writing to afterschool math, and the mere sight of a 1214-page NORTON READER is going to be trouble.

I haven't looked at The Norton Sampler yet, but I'm almost certainly going to be buying it tonight.


Susan explains the shift to early writing

Part of the problem is that, like New Math and Whole Language, there is a movement afoot to push what I consider middle school skills down into grade school, all with the assumption that grade school skills will just be learned by osmosis (or shoved onto the middle school teachers...again.) These are your two camps.

In the beginning this new way of teaching writing looks very impressive as little persuasive essays come home and state tests appear to improve. Like math, we didn't learn it that way and so what do we know? I believe this is what you would label teaching Whole to Parts.

The traditional way of learning writing (or math, for that matter) has always been Parts to Whole, starting with building blocks for younger children (handwriting, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation) and then moving to more complicated techniques requiring better critical thinking skills (notetaking, outlining, etc.)that actually match the child's growing opinions and ideas. This strikes me as common sense, but what do I know?

Whether this new way is really better in the long run is still unsure, from everything I've read, yet one can't help notice that something is wrong when college professors complain loudly about students' bad writing skills, and then even request a grammar section on the SATs.



That explains a lot.

I've never given it any thought, but offhand I would say that writing isn't 'foundational' or 'hierarchical' the way math is foundational or hierarchical.

Still, I think it's nuts to plunge right into paragraphs and short essays in grade school. Doesn't make sense to me.

Without knowing much about it, I'd say the focus in the early years is words and sentences; then paragraphs.

I don't know what to think about all the journal-writing tiny little children do these days. I like having a record of Christopher's 6-year old thoughts, but whether journaling helped him learn how to write, I don't know.

I was over at a friend's house the other day, looking at books on how to write. My friend was traumatized by a nasty writing teacher in high school and has only recently started to recover from that experience. She's read a number of books for people who want to write but are anxious or blocked, the writing equivalent of Math Anxiety.

All of these books, universally, promote journaling, freewriting, etc., etc......and they all seem utterly foreign to me.

I have no idea whether professional writers 'journal' or 'freewrite.' Maybe they do. If so, they don't talk about it much.

I do neither. I have zero interest in journaling or freewriting; I find the very word 'freewriting' slightly repellent. (Because it doesn't sound free?)

I have so little interest in journaling that I don't do it even though I wish I would. From time to time I remind myself that I'm letting my kids' childhoods pass by unrecorded & unremembered. Then I carry on not journaling.

I suspect that professional writers of nonfiction, which is what we're talking about, are motivated to 'communicate' more than to 'express.' I write every day, but I write to other people, not to myself. I used to write letters; now I write emails & blooki posts & comments on Kitchen Table Math.

I'm also motivated by curiosity, and nonfiction writing means Learning New Things virtually every day. That's another reason I write Kitchen Table Math. Once I write a post, people chime in with interesting comments and factoids I've never heard before. I love that, and it doesn't happen with Journaling or Freewriting.

Given that I've been a professional writer for quite awhile now, and given that I never, ever Journal or Freewrite, I'm not inclined to think that students should Journal or Freewrite as a means to learning to write themselves.

One other thing.

I never took a writing course.

I never even wrote a paper in high school. I arrived at Wellesley not knowing what a paper was.

I never took a writing course because I was terrified I would be told I was no good. I desperately wanted to be a writer, but didn't think I was good enough, and I figured if a teacher told me I wasn't good enough that would be the end of it.

So I didn't get near any teachers.

The funny thing is, when I finally got on track to write, just short of age 30, two different Authority Figures instantly popped out of the woodwork to tell me I wouldn't be able to do it. One said I didn't have the commitment or the drive; the other told me he'd never liked my writing. This person actually took the time to sit down and write me a letter saying, 'I've never liked your writing.'

People are bizarre.

In any case, they were too late. I'd made up my mind.

Getting back to how to teach children to write.....I think my own personal narrative tells me that writing isn't a hierarchical skill the way mathematics is, and I think it tells me that expository writing isn't a direct or natural outgrowth of Journaling or Freewriting, but may be a natural outgrowth of reading, thinking, and talking to other people about what you're reading and thinking.

I know that in order to write nonfiction you have to be reading nonfiction.

That's about as far as I can go tonight.


Johns Hopkins CTY course list (including math courses):
Crafting the Essay WRT3
Crafting the Essay 3B


KTM Commenter suggestions and recommendations:
First Language Lessons by Jesse Wise (recommended by Ken &, I think, Susan, looks good; apparently there are more books coming in the series)
Classical Writing series (Nick's Mama left the link for this series)

The two biggies amongst homeschoolers seem to be:
Writing Strands (the Well Trained Mind people use this series)
Excellence in Writing



KUMON reading

I'd bet money the KUMON reading program teaches writing as well as reading, if only incidentally. I've scanned in one set of KUMON reading worksheets and will get them posted to a separate KUMON page & linked here, so you can see what I'm talking about. KUMON Reading is as good a nonficiton, critical reading program as any I've ever seen.

Actually, KUMON Reading is the only nonfiction critical reading program I've ever seen. At our school, and apparently at many other schools, the kids read wall-to-wall fiction. No one teaches them how to read nonfiction.

KUMON does.


update: Norton Sampler TOC

This is fantastic:

Introduction

Annie Dillard, The Death of a Moth
Annie Dillard, How I Wrote the Moth Essay—and Why
The Processes of Writing
The Modes of Writing
Mixing the Modes (great)

1 Description

2 Narrative

3 Example

4 Classification and Division

5 Process Analysis

6 Comparison and Contrast

7 Definition

8 Cause and Effect

9 Argumentation and Persuasion

10 Classic Essays for Further Reading


It doesn't look overloaded with partisan picks, and there are two student essays included, which could be a lot of fun. Ann Hodgman ('No Wonder They Call Me a Bitch') is the author of three of my favorite cookbooks: Beat This, Beat That!, and One Bite Won't Kill You.

This is the one.


1918 version of Elements of Style online


blueline.jpg


* My neighbor's son has now written so many personal narratives he says he's running out of memories.




comments...


EndOfParentalInfluence 05 Dec 2005 - 02:13 CarolynJohnston

Catherine and I were just talking a little while ago about having boys in middle school. It's really amazing. Three months ago we had boys who weren't substantially different from the boys we'd had for several years. But they've really changed since entering middle school.

One thing that's caused a lot of domestic trouble around here lately is Ben's long-term reaction to our decision to take him out of his regular Connected Math class, and have him work with an aide from Saxon Math instead. Last year, I'm quite sure, it wouldn't have distressed him to be taken out of math class every day for different work; but this year it's a different story. He's obsessing about his forcible removal from the bosom of Ms. Fredson's math class morning and night.

Sometimes he's angry about it, as when he yelled the other night, "Connected Math is JUST FINE for me, MOM!", and "Ms. Fredson is a perfectly good teacher, MOM!" Sometimes he's imploring, as when, just a few minutes ago, he asserted that Ms. Fredson had never been unkind to him and so he should be able to go back into her class. When I made this decision, I honestly wouldn't ever have thought he'd have such a negative reaction -- though I would make it again.

I've explained to him any number of times that we liked Ms. Fredson and thought she was a good teacher; that what we don't like is the curriculum she has to work with. A curriculum, if you think about it, is a pretty abstract notion compared to that of a teacher.

I tried to give him a concrete example. I pulled a worksheet that Ben had done in his first week in Ms. Fredson's class: it was a quiz they'd taken on odd and even numbers. A number would be read off, and the kids would write 'odd' or 'even'. This was in a 6th grade accelerated math class. I don't even know for certain that that was a Connected Math activity (since the school actually uses a hybrid math curriculum - Connected Math and Prentice Hall); but I do know that he could do that easily in 2nd grade.

"That's pretty easy," Ben had to admit. I seized the advantage. "They just aren't learning as much as you are, Ben!" I said. And it's true.

It's hard to explain the notion of a gross institutional mistake to a kid, especially one on the autism spectrum.

Moral of the story

Try to get your accelerating and/or afterschooling done while your kids are in grade school. They become suddenly and definitively less pliable in middle school.

It's too late for me and Catherine, so save yourselves!



comments...


NoCommonSensey 05 Dec 2005 - 13:42 CatherineJohnson


OK, it's 8:40 am and I'm already exhausted.

At 5:30 this morning I heard a faint chime that sounded exactly like the doorbell. Ding.

I ignored it.

Then I heard it again.

Since I was asleep, and wanted to stay asleep, I ignored it again.

Then Abby started up. Boof. Boof, boof. You know the sound, the sneeze-bark thing dogs do in the bedroom when they know they're not supposed to be barking for real.

'Abby!' I hissed. 'Quiet!'

I was still asleep at this point.

Ding.

Ding, ding, ding.

Boof, boof.

Ding.

Ding, boof.

I was awake.

So there it was: two bad choices. The person ringing the bell was going to be a) my next-door neighbor needing help with an emergency so dire she and her husband couldn't handle it themselves (bad), or b) a complete stranger insistently ringing our doorbell at 5:30 in the morning, in the pitch dark & freezing cold (also bad). Great.

As Door Number 2 seemed far the more likely probability (simple Bayesian logic), I began filing through my dimly recalled News 4 stories concerning the various doorbell-ringing scams and assaults I was going to have to rule out before opening the door.

I woke Ed. Ed, who just got back from Paris last night, and didn't manage to get to sleep 'til, I don't know, 3 or 4 am.

Then I got up to investigate, expecting my two large, scary dogs to accompany me.

They didn't move.

What is it with my life?

What is it with my dogs?

Normally they're tearing down the stairs to shriek and bark and compete-to-greet whoever's there; now they're hugging the sofa. I'm not going down there in the dark, there's somebody out there. That's their attitude.

So I rousted the dogs, took them downstairs with me, and found the paper delivery lady stuck in my driveway. It snowed yesterday, my driveway goes downhill, nobody plowed it, the whole thing is a sheet of ice, and she decided to drive on down instead of just leaving the newspaper at the mouth of the drive as a person with common sense would do. Apparently she'd already been stuck at somebody else's house for half an hour, and she kept saying that her 'first year,' which it appears was not this year but last year, 'was awful.' I gather she spent a lot of time being stuck in people's driveways her first year, and now, wouldn't you know it, she's stuck in people's driveways this year, too. Being stuck in people's driveways at 5 am is like a horrible recurring nightmare she can't stop having.

I let Ed deal with it.


tp_rule.gif


8:25 am, I hear Andrew's bus up at the top of the driveway, I run shrieking out the door waving off the driver—Stop! Stop!—who ignores me and drives straight down the hill and then, as Ed joins me and starts shouting and waving, too, turns to keep on going down the hill to my neighbor's house.

We share a driveway with our neighbor. Our land was originally owned by John Jacob Astor, and apparently our two houses used to be the servants' quarters and the carriage house. The funny thing is, both my neighbor and I claim to be living in the servants' quarters. I always assumed it was obvious our house was the people house, but then I heard my neighbor saying a couple of times that her house was the servants' quarters and our house was the carriage house. Yet more evidence that we are related to apes and co-evolved with dogs.

Anyway, the point is, we share a downhill driveway with that stops at our house first, turns left, then continues downhill to their house. If you're driving a bus on ice, and you're all the way down at their house, that's it. You're staying there until someone tows you out.

Miraculously, Ed was able to prevent the driver from making the turn, so now he was stuck in front of our house instead of our neighbor's house. After an extended conference with Ed, he decided to try to turn the bus all the way around right there, directly in front of our garage, which soon meant he was stuck sideways in front of the garage blocking both of our cars instead of just the one he'd been blocking minutes before.

I won't go on.

My question is: Why?

You're driving a car/bus with rear-wheel drive, you come to a downhill driveway that's a sheet of ice, and you sail down it like it's the middle of June.

I don't get it.



RS132.JPG



no common sense-y




comments...


SheddingTearsOverEverydayMath 05 Dec 2005 - 23:16 CatherineJohnson


from Joanne Cobasko of SOCCM:

The email below came from a CVUSD parent. Names and sexual identities have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty.


blueline.jpg


Another Everyday Math Crying Story - Discovery method strikes out again

Working with my 2nd grader on her math homework - she becomes frustrated because she isn't being taught the algorithms that are needed to solve the problem. She sometimes gets so frustrated she cries. (name of curriculum director) should be fired for installing this crappy math curriculum. The one problem she cried on was:


91 — unknown = 45.


The teacher didn't instruct her to put the numbers in a column and subtract:

  91
 -45
  __
  46

How are the kids supposed to know how to do this without being taught? How is a kid supposed to solve the problem? My daughter's classmate wanted to construct a number grid writing all the numbers between 45 and 91 to try to solve it, her mother said. These poor kids whose parents are not helping them with math at home are going to be lost.

Heresay at (School using Everyday Math) is that the teachers aren't making the kids do the ridiculous algorithms EM teaches.

Supposedly a kid in Mrs B's 5th grade class who was a straight A student in math is now getting D's because Mrs. B isn't explaining the EM method well enough. What a shame these kids have to suffer through EM.

You know the kids will say they like the program because they just play games and don't memorize the math facts.

If you follow the logic of EM, why then should the kids have to memorize spelling words if they can just use spell check on the computer?






comments...

BlackAndWiliamRecommendationsForFormativeAssessment 06 Dec 2005 - 01:11 CatherineJohnson


Black and Wiliam (1998b) make the following recommendations:

  • Frequent short tests are better than infrequent long ones.

  • New learning should be tested within about a week of first exposure.

  • Be mindful of the quality of test items and work with other teachers and outside sources to collect good ones.

No more teaching for coverage.

No more punitive tests and shaming grades.

Teach to mastery.


key words: gapology
overlearning
remediating Los Angeles algebra students
Inflexible Knowledge: The First Step to Expertise by Daniel Willingham
Matt Goff & Susan S on remediating gaps
Anne Dwyer on diagnosing gaps & request for 'gap' stories
failing algebra in Los Angeles
formative assessment
formative assessment in a nutshell





comments...


MoreMiddleSchoolTrauma 06 Dec 2005 - 02:44 CatherineJohnson


So I'm going to ask Carolyn (hi, Carolyn!) to add a homeschooling category. That and a how-to-teach-writing category. (Smartest Tractor has left some books & advice, so I'll get those pulled up front tomorrow. Thank you. Please tell us more when you have time.)

I should have homeschooled Christopher.

Period.

We're watching him fall apart before our eyes. Tonight we had crying. Twice. He came home from school with two Ds on two English papers, another one on his chapter test in math. He's very close to failing his two main courses.

This was the Distinguished Student last spring, a child who has never earned less than a 4 on the state tests (and the English test is serious); now his father is talking about therapy. We're seeing his behavior deteriorate; we're seeing his handwriting deteriorate. Ed, tonight, was shocked by the regression in the look of his written work. He's writing like a child in first grade, and not a happy child, either.

I have now told them both that homeschooling is on the table.

Christopher and Ed say no, homeschooling is not on the table.

That's pretty much my position on therapy, come to think of it; we're not paying for therapy unless Ed gets another career. A much bigger, fatter career. And even then, forget it. I'm not paying a fortune in property taxes and therapy bills so Christopher can attend Irvington Middle School.

The one good thing is that Ed has written a letter to Mrs. Roth, copied to both principals and to the guidance counselor, that is destined to become a classic in the annals of IMS history. I don't know if he'll let me post it, but we can all hope.

Tomorrow he's writing the letter I didn't manage to write about the Grade Contract. I didn't manage to write it myself because I spent the week exhibiting impulse control.

Which, under the circumstances, was best for all concerned.


synchronicity

I've just this moment opened an email from my neighbor:

Michael Viscardi, a senior from San Diego, won a $100,000 college scholarship, the top individual prize in the Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Math, Science and Technology.

Viscardi said he's been homeschooled since fifth grade, although he does take math classes at the University of California at San Diego three days a week. His father is a software engineer and his mother, who stays at home, has a Ph.D. in neuroscience, he said.


Sounds like those folks hit the same wall I've hit. I'm printing it out for Ed.


oh—and tomorrow I get to talk to the PTSA Executive Committee about my sins as a Singapore Math instructor.

Pray for snow.




comments...


FirstDaysAtSchool 06 Dec 2005 - 05:15 CarolynJohnston

The discussion on the WhyPublicSchools post about girls and boys, and the differences in their personalities and needs, reminds me of a story that Bernie told about his teaching approach on first days in math classes that he taught in colleges.

The first impression, of course, is critical, and Bernie used to play those kids, especially the boys, like violins.

The boys, he said, needed some tough love on the first day. You could scare them with the notion that you were the strictest math teacher ever on the first day, get them braced and working, and then back down later, as necessary, if you wanted to. If you let them get the initial impression that you weren't the alpha dog in the classroom, then you'd lose them.

This approach, he said, backfired like crazy with the girls. A lot of them would run right out of the class on the first day and go drop the class like a hot potato. He really wished that he had a way of secretly conveying to the girls that his bluster was all an act put on for the boys' benefit, that he was really a sensitive guy who would treat them well. And he was, as the girls who stuck around found out.

I didn't try to moderate anyone's impressions of me on the first day, but in general my hand-holding style went over a lot better with the girls than the boys. Since math is pretty much just as difficult no matter who is teaching it, after a while some of the boys would be failing, and would stop coming to class. Bernie's approach on day one would have served those guys better.

Maybe this, more than any difference in math aptitude, is the reason to have single-sex classrooms.

comments...


PaulMillerAndRudbeckiaHirtaOnAssessment 06 Dec 2005 - 17:30 CatherineJohnson


I'm disheartened today. Watching Christopher fall apart is excruciating (all the more so given how much I know about fear and the brain), and.....

......and I've had it.

So when I got home this morning, after dealing with the THIRD car to be stuck in our driveway in two days (I'm starting to feel like Bill Murray in GROUNDHOG DAY), and found these comments from Paul Miller and Rudbeckia Hirta, I thought, There's hope. (I'll be a much more cheerful person tomorrow, or even.....later on this afternoon!)


from Paul:

One thing I've been putting a lot of thought into is how to teach to mastery in an environment where I'm on a strict schedule and have very limited time. I bet Black and Wiliam weren't thinking of people who have to jam what would be a whole year of algebra in high school into a semester.

Still, I have decided, there will be quizzes at least weekly next semester.



and from Rudbeckia:

This semester I gave twenty quizzes in calculus (the best 10 counted), and I'm thinking of giving quizzes every class next time I teach something from the algebra / precalc / calc sequence. Next time I'm going to make them VERY short, 3-5 minutes, and give them at the exact beginning of class. My bet is that the instructional face-time lost will trade well with increased studying.

Here's how I feel, reading these comments.

These comments, these actions, are a gift. A gift from two highly intelligent and educated people to the younger people they are trying to teach.

The way I'm feeling today, they're a gift to me, too.


where we are with English

Mrs. Roth can't teach our child. That battle we can handle, although the school will certainly refuse to move Christopher to another class. If I were a betting person I'd bet they end up moving him whether they want to or not, but we'll see.

Whether he goes or stays, he will never write another assignment for this woman.

Worksheets, fine; reading logs, check. But no written work. We're done.

What we need is for the principal to read Christopher's essay and tell him it's not a 'D.' His friends are making fun of him, telling him his parents are 'just saying' his essay is good, because we're his parents. All these boys insult each other all day long, Chris included. But on this issue his friends are drawing blood, which I'm sure they don't know. He's probably hurting them, too. The things they say to each other are appalling, and I have no idea what to do about it.

Advice?

Christopher's confidence is shot. He thinks he can't write, can't do math, can't do anything.

We saw this happen before, in 2001, after the attacks. He'd been an aggressive little soccer player, one of the best on the team. Then he lost his nerve. He just....stopped. On the field, he was diffident and slow. At school, he was bullied.

Ed was the soccer coach, so he was there; he watched it happen. He told me last night he's seeing the same thing all over again, only this time in academics, where it counts.

Maybe it's not like that; maybe he'll bounce back. We'll see.


question

So Mrs. Roth has to go, but the math teacher is another story.

She's very young; I think this is her first job. (back story for new readers stopping by: Her course last year was so brutal for the kids—unintentionally so—that the parents were in open revolt.)

She's a good egg. Last year must have been painful for her; the huge revisions they did to her course over the summer may have been distressing, too. Yes, it's important to have mentors and help, but having mentors and help in the context of parent fury is another story.

So....I need to push her for Christopher's sake, but I want to 'push' in a way that's positive, helpful, and likely to be listened to.

Here's what I think we need: If any of you have extra items to add, let me know


  • First item: I need to know, from the beginning of each chapter, what 'showing your work' means to Ms. Kahl.



Let me ask all of you: what is the work that would typically be shown for this question?

Compare using <, >, =

0.635 __ 0.365

To me, this is a simple comparison—but do teachers typically ask for work to be shown on this kind of question?

If so, does the student write a subtraction problem, or perhaps draw a number line?

I'll find out from Christopher's teacher, but I'm wondering about other peoples' experience.

I have no problem with the requirement that the kids show their work; I think it's probably good at this stage. But I've got to know from the get-go what 'showing your work' means for each given problem, so we can practice it from the get-go.

  • Second item, Christopher needs guided practice in class.


Christopher says that the norm is for Ms. Kahl to lecture and give an assignment. The kids do the procedure she's taught for the first time at home.

I'm sure his perception of the class and her perception of the class are going to be an imperfect match. she does have them do worksheets in class sometimes, or start their homework. I'm not sure whether either of those situations constitute 'true' guided practice, but they're probably in the realm.

Still, the fact is that he not infrequently comes home from school without a clue how to do the procedure she's demonstrated in class that day is significant. While she may be doing some guided practice, I need her to do more. Which means I'm crossing a line into the realm of telling a teacher how to teach.

  • Third, and most important, I need formative assessment to be happening in the class.


We have no teaching to mastery at all. Instead we have a classic 'accelerated' course, where the children are expected to be math brains, the teacher whizzes through the material, and only the strong survive. The weak fall behind, struggle to move their legs faster than they'll go, gulp down huge mouthfuls of air, pour sweat, and finally collapse in a heap. Only one grading period into the year so far, Christopher's nearing collapse. He earned a B on his first chapter test, a C on his 2nd, and, now, a D on his 3rd.

Yes, he could move down to the combined Phase 2/3 course.

He could move down and study place value. They've spent weeks on place value. I forget what they're doing now; I'll find out. It's not going to be anything he needs to spend an hour a day doing.

Here's my question: how do I broach these subjects?

These are large issues, not small. And this teacher is almost certainly in Paul's situation. She has to cover this material, and she has to cover it fast. What she's got to work with is nothing like a Singapore course where the curriculum has been painstakingly put together to allow the fastest possible progress for all children, math brains or no.

So she's up against it.

But we need these changes. We need the school and the individual teachers to assume responsibility for making sure the children have learned what they've been taught. All but the brainiest kids need this, and even the brainiest kids are going to need it somewhere along the line, too.


back to Rudbeckia & Paul

Actually, it suddenly occurs to me that I can cite Paul & Rudbeckia—especially, for my purposes, Rudbeckia's top-10-quizzes count approach.

That would be so much more humane for these kids, and so much more motivating.

Alright, that's a possibility.


what we told Christopher

The math situation is probably manageable.

Ed, this morning, read over Christopher's test and said that he's not having nearly the amount of homework he needs if he's to do the tests she's giving.

Math class lasts 50 minutes; the test had 24 questions, some with several parts. Christopher has two minutes at most to answer each question, and he has to show his work (and his handwriting is not only bad, but slow).

Now he's developed test anxiety, so he's not managing to read the questions. He must be freezing up, just not seeing the words.

The point is: if he's going to do 24-item tests in 45 minutes, he has to have more practice. Ms. Kahl sometimes sends home homework 'sets' with only 4 problems. Maybe the math brains can do 4 problems and ace a test (they probably can).

Christopher can't. If Christopher is going to do a 24-item test in 45 minutes he can't have done 4-problem homework sets. Wayne Wickelgren says children should do 30 problems a night. That's what Christopher needs to do. Thirty problems a night.

We were finally able to get through to him on this point last night—thanks to KUMON and to Saxon Math.

I said, "Do you ever flunk KUMON worksheets?"

Christopher said, "No."

I said, "Why don't you flunk KUMON worksheets?"

Christopher said, "Because I've practiced."

I said, "Because you've practiced a lot."

Then I said, "Did you ever flunk Saxon tests?"

"No."

Why?"

"Because I practiced."

"Because you practiced a lot."

Then both Ed and I said, You need to be able to do these problems as fast as you can write.

You need to be able to do them in your sleep.

You need to know them cold.

That's a simple message, and he understood it.

I hope it will finally start to sink in. Christopher thinks that if he can do a problem he knows it. It may take him 5 minutes to do one problem, but if he gets it right, he's done.

No one at the school has told him that isn't the way it works. He's had two months of "Study Skills" class and the only thing they seem to have told him about study and learning is 'Find a quiet place.'

I, of course, have been trying to get this message across for months, but, as Carolyn pointed out, we're hitting the end of parental influence.

Last night he heard us.

A couple of weeks ago I tracked down the Prentice Hall pre-algebra workbook that accompanies his text. We agreed that from now on he'll do ALL the problems on the work sheet, not every other problem, or, even worse, every fourth problem. (I'd put money on it Ms. Kahl has been told not to overload the kids with homework.)

Last night, that's what we did. Every single problem.

That proved to be a terrific object lesson.

He did one problem laboriously, taking far longer than he'd have on a test.

Then, because we were doing every problem, he did the next one— in half the time.

I said, "Look how much faster you got just from doing two problems instead of one."

He saw it.


cheeful thought

I'm going to get a grip now.

My neighbor, whose son struggled through this class last year, told me that the 7th grade book is mostly review. I think they start algebra in January, so I'm assuming they spend fall semester reviewing the gazillion procedures and concepts they learned in 6th grade pre-algebra, then make the move to formal algebra mid-year.

That's good.

I'm obviously back in re-teaching land; Christopher is losing another year of math instruction, just as he did in 4th grade.

But this time he's got KUMON, and KUMON speeds along. Yes, he's doing 3rd grade math now, but in two weeks he'll be doing 4th grade; 7 weeks after that he'll move to 5th. Slow but steady wins the race. Mr. Liu told us parents see major gains after one year of KUMON.

'You need to invest that time,' he said.

We're investing.

And this time I know I have to re-teach, and I'm starting now. I'll have the summer, too.

Then he'll have a fall semester of review with, I hope, the best teacher they've got.

So I think we can do this.




comments...


HelicopterParents 06 Dec 2005 - 21:13 CatherineJohnson




XXXX


dingbatWSJ2.jpg


helicopter parents, part 1
helicopter parents, part 2
helicopter parents, part 3
helicopter parents at the AFT
news from nowhere, part 6 (AP students)
helicopter parents of the word, unite
helicopter parents of the world, unite part 2a (t-shirts)
MiddleWeb says hovering is good





comments...

SusanOnBeingYourChildsSecretary 06 Dec 2005 - 21:27 CatherineJohnson


great comment from Susan


I have no idea what work you "show" for greater than/less that questions.

You might want to write down managable questions like what you put up above for your meeting with her, which I know you'll be having soon. That's perfectly legitimate and it will get you clear and perhaps make her realize that she's not so clear. She has to tell them what she means or the book must have had them doing it that way unless it is some standard way of doing it that everyone knows about.

We were having similar issues with not having enough homework for the work being asked to be done. We've had to use the other books I have for extra practice.


children don't know what they don't know

Again, children don't know what they don't know. They don't know about flexible/inflexible knowledge. They don't know how much is enough. An experienced teacher whose had children bomb on sections would probably anticipate problems with certain chapters. My son's algebra teacher is a veteran. He has stretched and redone some chapters with extra practice. After 25+ years of teaching math he knows exactly what's going to happen and when he can trust the text and when he can't. Even with that, some kids aren't going to make it and I still have the feeling it has more to do with not having enough practice.


the parent as personal assistant

I have had to become his personal secretary because of the school's expectations of him regarding homework and projects and deadlines. He is given all kinds of things to do with all kinds of deadlines and no real guidance on how to manage his time. Many of these things are lacking in specificity. I have to make him pull out his assignments and go through them one by one. If he can't explain something I ask why he didn't write down more so that he would understand it when he got home. We've had much whining and crying over this, but he's starting, finally, to realize that I am going to look at it when he gets home and it must make sense. Just my hammering away at the assignment book and his responsiblity to accurately get his work written down thoroughly has started to make him realize what he has to do to succeed, but that is a gargantuan assignment in and of itself.

I seriously don't remember this kind of juggling of assignments myself much before high school, so it irritates me that I have to take so much time to teach him how to even write it down properly.

I think as a parent you can point out these kinds of murky expectations by the teacher (like the show your work problem) and that they need to be clarified better.

Test-taking has been more difficult for my son, too. There's a stamina and a maturity needed that's a little different than is required for the quizzes. We were doing great on the quizzes, but tanking on the tests. We've talked it through with him and he's improving, but he still isn't as strong on them as he is on the quizzes.

It sounds like you are trying to turn it into a Life Lesson about perseverence and I think you are so smart to do so. Like you said, quitting soccer is no big deal, but he needs to see that some things he can't quit and that it will be alright. They really think it's the end of the world.

With all that blasted "character" stuff they're teaching, you'd think they'd include some of what he's going through.


the veteran

My son's algebra teacher is a veteran. He has stretched and redone some chapters with extra practice. After 25+ years of teaching math he knows exactly what's going to happen and when he can trust the text and when he can't.


This is exactly my concern with Ms. Kahl.

She is, I think, a 2-year veteran, and last year was a trial by fire.

Plus she's up for tenure this year, and while I don't know whether she should have tenure or not, I don't feel that she shouldn't. I know what a tenure year is like; we went through two years of he**. I'd have to feel strongly that she's in the wrong business to want to make Ms. Kahl's tenure year more stressful than it already is.

Christopher has said to me, several times, 'Ms. Kahl is a good teacher,' or 'Ms. Kahl is a pretty good teacher.'

Ms. Kahl isn't a crowd-pleaser; I'd be stunned to learn that she plays to the kids in any way, or grooms fans.

So if Christopher is telling me she's a good teacher, one thing he's not saying is that she's a narcisstic teacher winning love from kids. Plus he doesn't love her. He sees her as a good teacher who wants him to do well.

She's someone who might be a terrific teacher in 5 years' time.


chipperness restored

OK, Christopher just walked in chipper as usual; so far so good.

He's in particularly good spirits because they had another bomb threat today, so they had to walk down the hill to the Main Street School and mill around with their friends until The Danger Had Passed.

That's two bomb threats this fall, both at the middle school, and both, oddly enough, starting in the girl's restroom. "They always come from the girls' restroom," Christopher says.

I know my school didn't have bomb threats in the girls' restroom when I was a kid.

So we finished up with the bomb threat and segued to the subject of, "Do you have my Feature Story?"

"Yes, why?"

"Mr. Fried wants to see it."




comments...


HelicopterParentsPart2 06 Dec 2005 - 22:13 CatherineJohnson




Kirk_scream.jpg




helicopter parents, part 1
helicopter parents, part 2
helicopter parents, part 3
helicopter parents at the AFT
news from nowhere, part 6 (AP students)
helicopter parents of the word, unite
helicopter parents of the world, unite part 2a (t-shirts)
MiddleWeb says hovering is good





comments...

FuzzyMathInSeattle 06 Dec 2005 - 22:42 CatherineJohnson


Charles left a link to this article on reform math in Seattle:


Marilyn Leverson flips through the textbook to show how math instruction is changing.

Words dominate the pages, not numbers. There's not a problem set to be found. It's definitely not the kind of math book that parents remember — which dismays some of them. In Tacoma, students have two choices in high school — reform or traditional math. Teachers recommended the former, but the School Board decided to give families a choice, and about one-fifth of the students take the traditional math track.



One-fifth.

That tells you a lot (I think).

I'm like Bob Dole around this town: Where's the outrage?

Most people here don't care about TRAILBLAZERS one way or the other. (That may not be the case for parents of the youngest kids. I'm hearing a lot of rumblings from that quarter.)

So here we have a school district in Washington state offering choice, and 4/5 of the parents put their kids in fuzzy math. (I wonder if it's 4/5 of the students making that choice?)

I give up.


can we please stop talking about the basics?

Critics call it "fuzzy" math and warn it fails to give students a good grounding in the basics.

It's not basics.

It's foundational skills. Fuzzy math fails to give students a good grounding in foundational skills.

Also in all the nonfoundational stuff. That's gone, too.


IMP

Even when she used a more traditional text, Leverson says, she dreamed up exercises and projects like the ones in the new book Shorecrest uses, part of a series called the Interactive Mathematics Program. Its texts are divided into sections that start with a big problem that students spend weeks learning the math to solve.

One morning this fall, for example, a group of mostly sophomores and juniors in an Integrated III class were weeks deep into a trigonometry problem that required them to calculate when a man riding the Ferris wheel can let go of a partner to ensure the partner lands in the water as the cart passes by.



That's certainly time well spent.

Also it connects me to my world.


says who?

Everyone needs at least two ways to add, subtract, multiply and divide efficiently and accurately," says Jane Goetz, director of instructional services in Seattle Public Schools and, before that, an award-winning math teacher.


One question.

Why?

Why does everyone need at least two ways to add, subtract, multiply and divide efficiently and accurately?

Until very recently, I myself had just one way to do each, and it hasn't been a problem.

Also, learning to do forgiving division hasn't caused me to think Why oh why didn't somebody teach me this years ago, I've always needed another way to divide stuff efficiently and accurately.

By way of contrast, I feel exactly the opposite about KUMON, which does not teach more than one way to add, subtract, multiply and divide efficiently and accurately.

I wish I'd known about KUMON 20 years ago.


the cry of the Saxon bird

Ballard math teacher Niki Hayes is one of them. When she returned to teaching high-school math last year, she says she was surprised to find how many students couldn't do basics such as adding fractions. Showing them the steps refreshed many of their memories, she said, but the fact that they had forgotten showed they didn't know it well enough.

"You don't forget something that you really know," she said.

The national math council has good intentions but students don't get enough practice to master important skills, she says. So they struggle in algebra, Hayes says, because they're weak in long division.

There just isn't enough time in the regular, 50-minute math class to teach math through projects, she says, especially for students who are already behind. And she doesn't like "integrated" math, which she says jumps around too much, leaving students with holes in their knowledge.

Hayes favors Saxon Math, a textbook full of numbers and problem sets, and many fewer — and shorter — word problems. She has used the Saxon series in Texas, at an Indian reservation near Spokane and, most recently, at North Beach Elementary in Seattle, where she was principal for four years. In all those places, she said, students' math-test scores rose.

Hayes, however, says she's a "lone voice in the wilderness" among math educators in this state. But she's not all alone.




long division on your toes

....parent Shalimar Backman complained when she realized her son, as a fifth-grader, hadn't learned the standard method for long division.

"He was just doing wacko things trying to figure out how to divide," she said. "Fingers and toes and other things."

At TOPS, a K-8 school in Seattle, one parent says that when her son was in fifth grade, a third of the class sought after-school tutoring because their parents didn't think they were learning the basics well enough.




how many high schools have fuzzy math?

Yesterday I was asking myself why exactly I've taken it upon myself to oppose TRAILBLAZERS when my child doesn't have to use it and no one else cares, relatively speaking.

I mean, haven't I got enough to do trying to get Christopher through the 6th grade in one piece? (answer: yes)

Suddenly it came to me. Deterrence.

At present, Irvington Middle School is a Fuzzy Math-Free Zone.

I'd like to keep it that way.


source:
Seattle students' strengths & weaknesses in math




comments...


TwoWaysOfTeachingMath 06 Dec 2005 - 23:12 CatherineJohnson




math05.gif





comments...


UsFourthGradersArentGreatAfterAll 07 Dec 2005 - 02:57 CatherineJohnson

via joannejacobs, word that U.S. 4th graders aren't on par with their peers after all:


Despite a widely held belief that U.S. students do well in mathematics in grade school but decline precipitously in high school, a new study comparing the math skills of students in industrialized nations finds that U.S. students in 4th and 8th grade perform consistently below most of their peers around the world and continue that trend into high school.

Steve & Ken will be glad to hear this:
U.S. students consistently performed below average, ranking 8th or 9th out of twelve at all three grade levels. These findings suggest that U.S. reform proposals to strengthen mathematics instruction in the upper grades should be expanded to include improving U.S. mathematics instruction beginning in the primary grades.

“The conventional wisdom is that U.S. students perform above average in grades 4 and 8, and then decline sharply in high school,” says Steven Leinwand, principal research analyst at AIR and one of the report’s authors. “But this study proves the conventional wisdom is dead wrong.”


Steve Leinwand again.

That guy is everywhere.

I'll add that the 'conventional wisdom' is not that U.S. students perform above average in grades 4 and 8.

The conventional wisdom is that U.S. students perform exactly at average in 4th grade, then well below average in 8th, and far below average in 12th. Moreoever, at least one analysis (link t/k—it's here on ktm somewhere) has found that this decline starts in grade school and represents the cumulative total across time of incremental drops in performance in each and every grade throughout the school years.


I love it!

Countries that score well on items that emphasize mathematical reasoning (a higher-level skill) also score well on items that require knowledge of facts and procedures (a lower-level skill), suggesting that reasoning and computation skills are mutually reinforcing in learning mathematics well. Compared to other countries, students in the United States students do not do well on questions at either skill level.


So I guess Steve Leinwand's previous statements on the place of computational skills in a mathematics curriculum are inoperative?


a Steve Leinwand sampler

  • It's time to recognize that, for many students, real mathematical power, on the one hand, and facility with multidigit, pencil-and-paper computational algorithms, on the other, are mutually exclusive. In fact, it's time to acknowledge that continuing to teach these skills to our students is not only unnecessary, but counterproductive and downright dangerous.

  • Shouldn't we be as eager to end our obsessive love affair with pencil-and-paper computation as we were to move on from outhouses and sundials? In short, we know and should agree that the long-division "gazinta'' (goes into, as in four "goes into'' 31 seven times ... ) algorithm and its computational cousins are obsolete in light of everyday societal realities.

  • Today, real people in real situations regularly put finger to button and make critical decisions about which buttons to press, not where and how to carry threes into hundreds columns. We understand that this change is on the order of magnitude of the outhouse to indoor plumbing in terms of comfort and convenience, and of the sundial to digital timepieces in terms of accuracy and accessibility.


Of course, real people in real situations are frequently called upon to figure the precise moment at which a person riding a ferris wheel can let go of his partner so the partner lands in water as the cart passes by.


Pencil and paper
The craft of math

Summer Supplement Time
linking decline in high school scores to elementary school
research on summer regression
the time costs of not teaching to mastery
U.S. fourth graders not doing as well as thought
Phase 4 topic list, grade 6 class
comments thread on pre-algebra as algebra






comments...


NewUniversityOfMissouriStudy 07 Dec 2005 - 04:14 CarolynJohnston

While news-surfing tonight, I encountered some good news; the NSF has funded Yet Another Multi-Million Dollar Study (acronym: YAMMS) on the effectiveness of traditional vs. fuzzy math!

The answer is clearly on the horizon at last!

Douglas Grouws, an MU professor of math education, leads a research team that recently won a $2 million National Science Foundation grant to compare high school math programs. The four-year study will focus on schools that, like Columbia's, offer a choice between a conventional math sequence and integrated math courses. It will involve 3,000 to 6,000 students in multiple states.

I think the study is going to compare the performances of kids who self-select into fuzzy programs to those that self-select into the traditional track, so the validity of the study is out the window right there.

But there's more:

Traditionally, U.S. high schools have taught subjects such as algebra or geometry in separate classes. Integrated math uses a series of classes that blend various math subjects. Grouws says it's the norm internationally, even though U.S. parents and educators are still debating its effectiveness in preparing students for college and real-world math competence.

Is this even true? Do schools in other nations -- say Japan -- teach a mishmosh of algebra and geometry in each year of high school?

He says schools have already expressed interest in his project because there's little high-quality, objective data on the subject.

How do you suppose that little problem of the self-selecting sample got past the NSF?

Or that of the biased principal investigator:

"I think most people will be interested in the students' mathematics learning, but we're also interested in the students' disposition toward math," Grouws said. "In some ways, it does little good for students to become quite proficient at mathematics but never want to face another math problem again."

The article comes from the Columbia paper, and they are as interested in their K-12 program as they are in what the professors are doing. Columbia schools, it notes, have adopted Connected Math, and it's not meeting the school board's expectations of improvement.

After reviewing district math performance at a recent Board of Education meeting, board member Elton Fay asked whether it was time to re-evaluate integrated math because test scores showed little progress at the high school level.

"As we look at the integrated program, we have not been able to collect data in particular to address Mr. Fay's question," Cozette said later.

The Columbia schools math coordinator, Chip Sharp, added that students in traditional and integrated math might not show significant performance differences at all.

"Internally, it's not a competition, one group versus another," he said.

That's what you call shooting an arrow blindly, seeing where it lands, and drawing a bullseye around it.



comments...


InstapunditTextbook 08 Dec 2005 - 01:13 CatherineJohnson



homework.jpg



via joannejacobs
We Don't Need No Education -- At School. You can do that at home!



second question

Is this a mixed message?

source:
Eastside





comments...


ThirdGradeMathSupplementation 08 Dec 2005 - 04:05 CarolynJohnston

A KtmGuest asked tonight:

If you were going to supplement your child's 3rd grade math curriculum, which program would you suggest, Kumon, Saxon or Singapore?

Depends on the math curriculum -- does your child have a constructivist ("fuzzy") math curriculum, such as Everyday Math or MathLand or Trailblazers (to name only a few)?

If so, I'd want to make sure your child learns and practices the skills he or she might miss out on in class. Any of the three options will give you that. Kumon might do it most painlessly -- it is designed to serve as a supplement to a regular course, and every new worksheet is designed to build as painlessly on the previous one as is possible.

However, someone at some point will have to be the one to sit down and teach the child the basic algorithms. In our case, that someone was me, and I needed a real curriculum with a real text at that point, for some guidance. I liked and like Saxon Math because I find it is almost 'teacher-proof'; that is, it doesn't require a lot of special training for a teacher to be successful with it. Every section is a small step forward, and the text itself contains excellent explanations.

I think Singapore Math is a wonderful curriculum if you are up to it (if you're going to teach it, you'll need to brush up on their methods and feel comfortable with them yourself). The benefits will really accrue over the years if you stick with it.

One thing to consider is that you and your child may often be tired when it comes to be time for afterschooling; Ben and I typically are. I think that if this is often the case, Kumon may be the smoothest path to the Buddha. Catherine will be able to say more on this. If everything I've heard is true, kids probably get so comfortable doing math in Kumon that they lose their anxiety, and it makes everything go more smoothly throughout the rest of school, especially if they start young (and I think third grade counts as young!). And heaven knows they get lots of practice, and get their skills down.

A question for Catherine though; if a child coming in from a fuzzy curriculum gets a Kumon worksheet involving doing a multi-digit multiplication or some other algorithm that he hasn't learned, does the Kumon instructor teach the algorithm?

If your child's curriculum isn't fuzzy -- if you can count on his learning skills in class -- and you just want to supplement to enrich his or her education, Singapore Math 'challenging word problems' might be a great way to go. We've suggested to people who are considering homeschooling in math that they consider using Saxon as a base curriculum, and supplementing from the "Singapore Math challenging word problems" series, but this is probably too big a plan for after school supplementation.



comments...


AGradeContractThatMakesSense 08 Dec 2005 - 15:35 CatherineJohnson


Ken's the first person I've ever met who could give me a run for my money on Googling skills. He's amazing.

Look what he came up with last night:


gradecontract.jpg



Here's the DI contract side-by-side with Irvington Middle School's contract:

gradecontracts.jpg



Think and Discuss


source:
Managing Classroom Behavior, p 149 (pdf file)



my contract to improve Christopher's grades
a Grade Contract that makes sense
the book
Grade Contract for married people
climb down
Smartest Tractor saves the day
KIPP Academy contract





comments...


MeetingWithThePrincipal 08 Dec 2005 - 16:58 CatherineJohnson


We're meeting with the principal tomorrow morning.

The Mrs. Roth issue is simple at this point. We know what needs to happen for Christopher, and we'll stay on the case until it does happen.

The larger issues are tough.

I've just had a call from the Study Skills teacher.

Her voice was cold and critical from the get-go; mine was friendly.

That changed fast.

She was calling, she said, to tell me that Christopher is suddenly coming to class unprepared.

I asked what he hadn't done.

But here's a question: does one 'prepare' for a class called 'Study Skills'? Wouldn't Study Skills mean that the child is being taught how to prepare?

At first I assumed she was calling to say, 'He's close to failing English and math; I'd like to talk about what's happening.'

But that wasn't it.

She was calling to say Christopher is unprepared for Study Skills.

I didn't learn all the facts of the situation, because the teacher hung up on me not too long into the conversation.

This is what you pay the big bucks for.

$18,000 per pupil spending, and the Study Skills teacher calls you at 10 am, interrupts your work day to tell you your child is unprepared, then hangs up on you.

I did learn that Christopher failed to hand in his Grade Contract.

Good. Here I was, set to write a formal email rescinding my signature, and Christopher didn't hand the thing in.

Given that opening, I told her that we aren't signing the contract; nor will we allow Christopher to sign.

Things took a turn for the worse.

I said the school's contract puts the onus for learning on the child; she said Christopher "shares" the onus for learning; I said Christopher is a child who loves school so much he sits down at night, every night, to do his homework happily and willingly, who was the Distinguished Student at Main Street School, who has 4s on all state tests—and that if Christopher is suddenly coming to class unprepared that is due to the school causing him emotional damage.

I said, too, that after two months of Study Skills Christopher does not have the slightest idea how to study for a test. I can't have him sign a contract saying he will study more effectively when he doesn't know how to study at all.

That observation also failed to ignite even a spark of interest in the person responsible for teaching Study Skills.

The only thing Christopher has learned about study skills, as far as I can tell, is 'Find a quiet place to work.' (Good luck finding a quiet place to work when you have two autistic brothers.)

Again: no interest in this information from the Study Skills teacher.

I'll add that my own voice became sharp and cold as the conversation progressed, or, rather, failed to progress.

But I remained 'professional' (can parents be professional?); I used appropriate language; I said that I felt we are confronting a school-level problem and that I did not specifically blame her for the difficulties we're having.

She hung up.

When I say the Irvington School District does not seek a partnership with parents, what I mean is: the Irvington School District does not seek a partnership with parents.


so here's the question

At the moment, I'm at a loss as to how to frame our problem.

We are asking for a paradigm shift.

Our school, like most or perhaps all American schools, blames the student when the student fails.

That was the tone and attitude of the Study Skills teacher; it hadn't crossed her mind to wonder whether Christopher's behavior has anything to do with her.

Here's a terrific passage from Engelmann:

Galen Alessi wrote an article in 1988 in which he diagnosed diagnosis. He asked 50 school psychologists to indicate how many cases they referred during the year. The average was about 100 per psychologist; so the group provided information on about 5000 kids. Alessi next tried to determine the different causes of the kid's learning problems. How many of the kids had the learning problem because of inappropriate curriculum? How many had learning problems because of poor teaching, or because of school administration problems? How many kids had problems because of home problems, or because there was some defect in the kid?

The percentages came out something like this:

  • The curriculum caused 0% of the referred problems:

  • The teaching practices caused 0% of the referred problems;

  • The school administration caused 0% of the referred problems;

  • The home environment caused 10-20% of the referred problems;

  • The child caused 100% of the referred problems.


This is where we are.

There isn't going to be any public acknowledgment that the school is associated in any way with the deterioration in Christopher's learning.

Behind the scenes the principal will, I assume, take some steps.

We won't be there for that.

What is it we need to be saying tomorrow?

What documents should we take with us?


and what about math?

The question of Christopher's math class is probably thorniest of all.

Ed seconded Steve and Anne this morning; I think he may have said he was told explicitly not to do cross multiplication.

He had terrific math teachers in high school. He learned math well enough to pass the advanced calculus class for engineering students at Princeton freshman year, and to teach high school math successfully to G.E.D. students later on.

His teacher never taught them 'tricks.'

The students set up all problems as equations, and solved the equations according to general rules. Much later, after these foundational principles had become second nature, he learned the shortcuts that are derived from foundational principles.

I'll set up a separate meeting with Ms. Kahl, obviously.

But I need to be able to tell the principal, tomorrow morning, what Christopher needs to succeed in pre-algebra.

And I need to be able to do this clearly and succinctly.

So if you have ideas, let me know.


what I'm thinking . . .

I'll broach the issue of teaching procedures and 'tricks' simply and behaviorally.

I'll say that the teacher should tell Christopher to write out all problems as equations, and solve them—and that he needs enough paper on tests to do this.

I've already requested that Christopher be allowed to use scratch paper in tomorrow's test (this may be something the kids are always allowed to do, I don't know).

All I know is that the teacher gives very long tests in very small fonts with insufficient space for 'side calculations,' and with minimal space for showing one's work. His handwriting doesn't fit the space given.

I will also say that he needs to do 30 practice problems per concept or procedure taught.

That's as far as I've gotten.


update: scratch all that

Ed has much better ideas.


documents

I'm taking with me:

  • the grade contract Ken found

  • the study cited by Engelmann

  • probably a printout of Steve's and Anne's Comments about teaching general principles and practicing those general principles to mastery

What else?

One or two articles from Willingham?

Something else I've forgotten for the moment?

Is there a particular passage from Engelmann I should have? (I'm sure there is.)


my contract to improve Christopher's grades
a Grade Contract that makes sense
the book
Grade Contract for married people
climb down
Smartest Tractor saves the day





comments...


SadBeanKumon 08 Dec 2005 - 18:45 CatherineJohnson


A ktm guest left this.

I love it!



KUMON


Zoloft







comments...


TheExpertStudent 08 Dec 2005 - 21:22 CatherineJohnson


Our curriculum committee is reading this article (pdf file).
Abstract

This article suggests that conventional methods of teaching may, at best, create pseudo-experts—students whose expertise, to the extent they have it, does not mirror the expertise needed for realworld thinking inside or outside of the academic disciplines schools normally teach. It is suggested that teaching for “successful intelligence” may help in the creation of future experts. It is further suggested that we may wish to start teaching students to think wisely, not just well.


Robert Sternberg, btw, is an empirical psychologist at Yale who specializes in 'practical intelligence.' I haven't read this article, yet, but I did send links to all of Willingham's American Educator articles to our Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum as suggested reading. Just in case Sternberg says something that needs countering.





While I'm posting links, Ken left this last night:

Constructivism in the Classroom: Epistemology, History, and Empirical Evidence (pdf file).

I started reading before falling asleep, and discovered that constructivism is linked to deconstruction, Derrida, postmodernism, and all the rest.

Over the previous two decades the emergence of post-modernist thought (i.e., radical constructivism, social constructivism, deconstructivsm, post-structuralism, and the like) on the American intellectual landscape has presented a number of challenges to various fields of intellectual endeavor (i.e., literature, natural science, and social science) (Matthews, 1998; in press). Nowhere is this challenge more evident and therefore more problematic than in the application of post-modernism (in the form of constructivist teaching) to the classroom. Employing constructivist teaching practices is problematic at two levels: (1) there is an absence of empirical evidence of effectiveness; and (2) employing this approach for which there is a lack of evidential support, means not employing instructional practices for which there is empirical support. The purpose of this article is to present an overview and critique of constructivist teaching practices, followed by a brief review of evidenced-based practices in teaching.

I had no idea.

I studied all those folks in film school, then left the field because I rejected the entire realm of postmodern thought and scholarship. All of it, kit and caboodle.

I thought I was never going to see that stuff again.


the bad news

If Matthews is correct, if radical constructivism is in fact linked to post-structuralism, things are worse than I thought. (Which should be comforting in its way, since things are always worse than you think, so this is just one more orderly, predictable illustration of the Basic Principle.)

The entire post-modernist project is based in the notion that there is no empirical evidence, for anything.

Whether stated explicitly, or as more often the case, implicitly, the implications of an epistemological view that contends there is no objective reality has a profound effect on how the process or education in the classroom is approached. An important and necessary question in the educational process must be,“How does one establish and evaluate knowledge?” In order to answer this question, we inherently assume that: (1) there is some correspondence between language and reality; (2) our propositions about our observations are logically coherent; and (3) there is a reliable and systematic method of testing our observations. If there is no reality other than that constructed by language and our narrative lacks internal coherence then the two criteria for verifying any observation have been eliminated and one is left with a relativistic nihilism.


My position on this was always: if there's no objective reality, how come you keep hitting the light switch every time you walk into the room?


key words: Piaget Dewey Vygotsky Derrida




comments...

TheBook 08 Dec 2005 - 22:17 CatherineJohnson


So today, in Study Skills, Christopher had to Sign The Book.

This is one of their punitive things, The Book. Mrs. Roth has one, too. She's proud of it; she talked about The Book for at least 10 minutes on Back to School night, and held it up for all of us to see, then kept pressing both hands down on the cover, her fingers splayed out, to stress her points. When kids do something wrong, they have to Sign The Book.

Christopher had to Sign The Book twice today in Study Skills.

Once because he didn't have his Grade Contract, and once because he didn't have a Number Two Pencil.

sheesh, no pencil? Why didn't have a pencil?

I'm majorly unhappy with the school at the moment, but I do want my child to show up in class equipped with writing implements.

Turns out he did have a pencil; he had a mechanical pencil. The reason he had to Sign The Book was that the teacher couldn't tell if it was a Number Two Pencil.

Why did he need a Number Two Pencil?

Because he had to take a test on study skills.

He doesn't have any study skills, but he has to take a test on study skills, and he has to have a Number Two Pencil that says Number Two Pencil on the side in order to take a test on the study skills he doesn't have.


blueline.jpg



I was thinking about the Grade Contract.

Ken pointed out that a 'contract' in which only one party promises to do something isn't a contract.

In a contract both parties promise to do something.

Tonight I realized that document is more like a Signed Confession.


my contract to improve Christopher's grades
a Grade Contract that makes sense
the book
Grade Contract for married people
climb down
Smartest Tractor saves the day
KIPP Academy contract



10c.jpg





comments...


WhoseFaultIsIt 08 Dec 2005 - 23:07 CatherineJohnson


I need to find the Galen Alessi article:

Parents frequently report that they are intimidated, patronized and made to feel guilty and inadequate by staff at their child's school. After a few negative experiences, these parents feel increasingly helpless, frustrated and defensive.

Not surprisingly, parents behave exactly like other human beings when they are blamed or attacked. Feeling internally threatened and uncomfortable, most respond by trying to explain and justify their position, hoping that they will be understood. A few go on the offense, firing volleys of blame back. Many parents find these experiences exquisitely painful and humiliating. If they withdraw and try to avoid school functions, they may find themselves labeled as "uninvolved parents" - which accounts for their child's learning problems.

Sometimes, emotions get out of control. Feelings of intense anger, bitterness, and betrayal consume parents and school personnel - who are then completely unable to work together in educational planning and decision-making. In these cases, everyone loses - and the child may be the biggest loser if his parents and educators cannot work together effectively.

What is the basis for these negative experiences? Are parents too sensitive? Do they misperceive and misunderstand what happens in their contacts with educators? Or are parents just loyal and over-protective of their children, as many educators claim?




If anyone has a copy, let me know:

Diagnosis Diagnosed: A Systemic Reaction, Professional School Psychology, 3 (2), 145-151




I, for one, am loyal, over-protective, and married to a man who can sling the lingo like nobody's business.

PLUS I am a card-carrying member of this organization:


logo.jpg


I was a member of Mothers From Hell 1, too.

I can't sling the lingo, but I have my own specialty, which is complete and total rejection of Other People's Categories.

I once had a horrible situation with Jimmy's special ed program at BOCES. It was a mess. The program was a mess; the children were a mess; the staff was a big, fat, demoralized mess. It was such a mess that other BOCES staff members, in other programs, were telling parents, openly, 'yeah, that program's a mess.'

So I was handling the situation, and we'd pretty quickly reached the Universal Agreement That Mom Is Crazy point, only without my realizing it, when the new head of the program called.

The line they'd been taking with me was that they 'had to be realistic.'

Roughly translated, this meant, 'Your son is a retarded ax murderer and you expect us to teach him stuff?' (I also have a knack for reading subtext.)

So I'd been hearing this We-have-to-be-realistic cr**, and I was in no mood.

The new administrator calls me up, he's in the Reasonable Administrator zone, he let's slip the fact that everyone involved has had a conference about me. Not about the fact that Jimmy is learning nothing in their program, and is deteriorating by the minute — no, nothing about the student. They've held a meeting about me. (I forget how he let this slip, but he did.)

Then he says, "I have to be realistic."

I said, and this stands today as my greatest triumph, "In this house we do not believe in realism."

That set him back.

You could hear the stunned silence on the line.

I said nothing. Just let him hang there.

Finally he said, in a tone of voice filled with exploratory caution and dread (Can an insane mother reach through the phone lines and strangle me? Is that possible?), "Maybe we're not talking about the same thing. Could you fill me in a little?"

I said, "In this house, we reject realism. We do not believe in 'being realistic.'"

Then I stopped talking. Again.

Oh, it was great. Great, great, great.

Eventually we worked our way around to the revelation that 'in this house we do not believe in being realistic' meant 'in this house we believe in you people doing your job,' and the point had been made. Made and double made.

Things never improved with that program, but the Crazy Mom stuff came to a screeching halt, which was something.

Then our school created a terrific program for Jimmy and brought him back to district.


key words: blame the student school psychologist
Pamela Darr Wright summary of Galen Alessi study
Evolving Functions for the School Psychologist
Whose Fault Is It?
educational rights of special need children versus typical children
Engelmann on Galen Alessi study
Pamela Darr Wright posted to ktm
"public school has never been about outputs..."





comments...


GradeContractForMarriedPeople 09 Dec 2005 - 12:44 CatherineJohnson




Report Card Evaluation and Contract to Improve My Grades
(form for husbands)

This/These past (check one)

 2

 5

 10

 20

 25

 30

 40

 50

year(s) my grades for this marriage were ___

I earned these grades because:

___  I completed all assignments.

___  I met all deadlines.

___  I came to class prepared to learn.

___  I participated actively and effectively in classroom discussions.

___  I am a wrestling GOD.

___  I am sometimes cold and critical.

___  I am sometimes scolding and condescending.

___  I am sometimes negative and unsupportive.

___  I am passive aggressive.

___  I have no idea what you're talking about.

___ other:  __________________________

In order to improve my grade(s), I will:

1.                       6.

2.                       7.

3.                       8.

4.                       9.

5.                      10.

I, ___________________, hereby, sign this contract, etc.





my contract to improve Christopher's grades
a Grade Contract that makes sense
the book
Grade Contract for married people
climb down
Smartest Tractor saves the day
KIPP Academy contract





comments...


SnowDay 09 Dec 2005 - 13:58 CatherineJohnson



woohoo.jpg
photo caption: woohoo




comments...

StudySkillsTeacherClimbDown 09 Dec 2005 - 16:02 CatherineJohnson


So where did we leave things?

  • Superintendents bigfooting Singapore Math class

  • Mrs. Roth distributing Ds and public shamings

  • Study skills teacher calling to berate hapless parent

  • Study skills teacher hanging up on hapless parent

  • Big Meeting with principal cancelled due to snow


I think that's where we were.


further developments

The Study Skills teacher has come to her senses. (Come to her senses or been told to come to her senses, more likely.)

Christopher came home from school and reported that the Study Skills teacher had said to the class that she 'could tell' which children have to be reminded to do their homework.

Then she named four children, all of them boys. Christopher was one.

Next she said she could tell which children did not have to be reminded to do their homework.

She named a girl (who promptly said, 'Yes, I do have to be reminded to do my homework.')

So then it was back to the Email Factory. Writing emails to the school is becoming a full-time job. I don't like writing emails to the school. I certainly don't like writing emails to the school on an hourly basis. But I'll do it if they keep this up. (My friend M. tells me she knows moms who send hostile emails to the school every day. I believe it.)

Christopher never has to be reminded to do his homework. He always does his homework; he likes to do his homework. He's done his homework without being reminded since he was a tiny boy.

He has to be reminded to do my homework.

He has to be bludgeoned to do my homework.

He is, however, devoted to doing the school's homework.

So I sent an email, the tone and content of which I would characterize as terse, to the Study Skills teacher, copying it to the principal, to Ed, etc., etc.

I closed with the line, "Another item to add to tomorrow’s expanding agenda."

I heard back promptly.

Chris has always been a wonderful student. She was 'half teasing' when she said he has to be reminded to do his homework. She is 'puzzled' and 'surprised' by his recent lack of preparation. She 'meant no harm,' and she is 'concerned.'

Fine.

This isn't what I would call an apology, as in I'm sorry I hung up on you, it was rude and unprofessional, it won't happen again; and it's simply a softer version of the your defective child theme, but fine.

She can be taken off the agenda, because there's already too much stuff on there.

Of course, we are going to be talking about the Grade Contract. We are going to be talking about the punitive, child-blaming nature of the school's educational philosophy. I know I said we'd be concrete and specific, but it turns out we're going to be abstract and theoretical. Then we'll be concrete and specific.

The highly abstract and theoretical point we'll be making from now on is:

If Christopher is getting Ds on essays, it's the school's fault.

If Christopher is getting Ds on math tests, it's the school's fault.

If Christopher is coming to class without his freaking Contract To Improve My Grades, it's the school's fault.


I know J D has debriefed many an ex-teacher who thinks parents are crazy. I know, because I've debriefed them myself.

I know our school administrators are going to attempt to think we're crazy.

But we're both writers, and we're both educators, or have been. Educators treat educators and writers differently. They just do. We've gone into situations like this before, and we've made our point.

One last thing.

We've been at this for 15 years. You have to think longterm, not short-term. (I realize I say this as a person who stinks at strategy.)

We won't Change Things tomorrow.

We don't have to.

We'll get what we need for Christopher, or, at a minimum, we'll be one step down the path toward getting what we need for Christopher. (Pupil personnel is the next stop; then an Advocate, etc.)

Meanwhile the school will know they have two highly educated parents demanding that the school perform systematic formative assessment and teach students to mastery.

This concept is not unknown to American educators, no matter how much edu-blah-blah they've been forced to regurgitate for their Ed.D.'s. We're tapping into thoughts and ideas they already have, and we're talking about techniques some of their teachers are already using. There are teachers at the Irvington Middle School who are using formative assessment. The administrators know this.

I've learned over the years that taking a radical stance 'works.' At least, it works for us. Being 'unreasonable' on purpose shakes things up. It refuses to play the game of I-have-to-be-realistic, when what I-have-to-be-realistic means is I don't have to teach your child.

What we're confronting now is the regular-ed version of I-have-to-be-realistic.

The regular ed version is Your child is responsible for his grades.

or, alternatively, 'I am concerned.' (See email from Study Skills teacher, above.)

When I taught writing, I had the students go through each and every sentence in an essay and answer the question, 'What is the underlying assumption?'

What is unspoken because it goes without saying?

The underlying assumptions, in each and every conversation parents hold with Irvington Middle School personnel, are:

1) My child is responsible for his grades.

2) My child's character is not what it should be. ('Your child will be a better person.')

We reject both assumptions, and we'll say so.

Then we'll keep right on on saying it.


the bell curve

This is rich.

My friend M. just told me that someone actually came into her son's math class, drew them a bell curve on the board, and explained to them that a grade of 'C' is average and normal, so they shouldn't expect to get As. Just a few children can get As. Not everyone.

Christopher says this didn't happen in his class, but that all the teachers tell them 'C' is average. They're supposed to be happy to be average; that's the message.

That explains a lot. Christopher has been constantly telling us that 'C' is average and good. We've been very unhappy with his recent Cs and Ds, and his answer is 'C is average, it's a good grade.' Obviously there's a systematic effort underway at the school to convince the 6th graders that their Cs are OK.

M. said, 'How can they tell these kids C is average and then have them sign a contract promising not to be average?'

Good question.

She also told her son, who just got a C on his math test, 'You're not average.'

Meanwhile I'm learning that the high school won't let kids into various courses if they do have Cs, which means the middle school is handing out Cs left and right, Cs that will track them into lower level courses in high school, without informing the parents that this is the case.

That's another agenda item for the Big Meeting. We want a precise list of all high school courses and tracks, the requirements for being admitted to AP courses and tracks, and the school's plan for making sure Christopher is prepared to enter these courses and tracks and succeed.

"The mission of the Irvington School District is to create a challenging and supportive learning environment in which each student attains his or her highest potential for academic achievement, critical thinking and life-long learning."

I'm certain the new superintendent didn't contemplate the possible consequences of creating this mission statement.

Too bad.

That's the mission and we're holding them to it.


my contract to improve Christopher's grades
a Grade Contract that makes sense
the book
Grade Contract for married people
climb down
Smartest Tractor saves the day





comments...


SmartestTractorsAssessmentForm 09 Dec 2005 - 18:35 CatherineJohnson




selfassessmentstudents.jpg

"Attached is a page from our Guide to the Provincial Report Card. It is not required we use it in our classrooms, but I find it helpful in focusing some students. At worst, it is an alternative to the page you have been handed."


thank you





my contract to improve Christopher's grades
a Grade Contract that makes sense
the book
Grade Contract for married people
climb down
Smartest Tractor saves the day
KIPP Academy contract





comments...

JDOnHoughtonMifflinMath 09 Dec 2005 - 22:40 CatherineJohnson


I love this.

I wanted to know what textbook Instapundit's daughter was using, and it turns out that not only does a regular Contributor to ktm know what the book is, he edited it.

This makes me feel proud, and slightly smug.

Smug is good.

Here's J D:


I was the editor on Grade 5 (the book in the picture is the 2005 copyright that I edited in Boston). There's a 2002 copyright that has a different cover but pretty much the same material. I worked on that one in NJ, but it was for the California adoption.

I even designed (the layout of) some of the pages in the 2005 book (pictured). And we put in some Singapore models when they were helpful.

The book is CERTAINLY not "fuzzy." Commercial publishers experimented with and really got slapped around for fuzziness at the end of the 90s and beginning of the 00s. Houghton got dinged for "Math Central," which gave rise to this new series. Many of the editors joked that Math Central was really popular with kids because it didn't have any math in it.

The problem, of course, is that adoptions and purchases tend to go in cycles from 5-7 years. So if a school bought a "fuzzy" math program right when a "non-fuzzy" one came out, although it would take the public about a year (or less) to figure out it was terrible, the school would be hard-pressed to replace it for 5 to 7 years--that's pretty much your entire elementary school life.

I worked on data, number theory, and fractions and decimals chapters in the 2005 version of HM Math--Chapters 7-12. And I wrote a lot of the problems and a handful of lessons throughout the book.

I am extremely proud of the work I did with mean, median, and mode. State standards often ask that curriculum describe how mean, median, and mode are used to describe the central tendency of data. Then texts talk about mean and median, but they never say when to use mode--or at least we never did.

So I produced something--after several discussions (and conflicts) with Bruce Vogeli, one of the authors listed in the book and a professor of mathematics at Columbia--that really came out nicely: simple, informative, and powerful.

The only problem I have with the book (I haven't read the latest version) is that the recently canned editorial director (my former boss and reason for leaving) there made the ridiculous decision to start adding too much extra junk to it in order to compete.

She managed to get a sneak peek at what a rival publisher (I don't even know who--I think it was Scott Foresman) was doing and started adding features that she thought would sell.

In the end, I and a few other editors were calling the series Tammy Faye.

Good instruction, too much glitz. Without the standards list in the back (only certain states), the book is 685 pages long.



I love the Tammy Faye line.

I'm also interested in the 5-7 year adoption cycle. I hope JD will tell us more when he has time.


homework.jpg



what is this book




comments...


AllIWantForChristmas 10 Dec 2005 - 01:06 CatherineJohnson




USBwarmer.jpg


OK, I admit it.

I like this thing.

I want one.

I want to buy one for Ed for Christmas, and then use it when he isn't using it (that's assuming he doesn't take it into his office, in which case I won't be using it).

However, having now spent a good.....30 minutes......attempting to order a U.S.B. Cafe Pad from usbgeek.com, and pay for it via PayPal, I give up.

I can never deal with PayPal again, ever.

I still like this thing, though.


usbcafepad2_s.jpg








comments...


EngelmannOnRulesForInstallingCurricula 10 Dec 2005 - 01:49 CatherineJohnson


Ken's done more of the typing!

Thank you!


Here's Engelmann on rules School Boards should insist the school district follow when installing a new curriculum:


1. Don't install any practice or reform unless you have substantial reason to believe that it will result in improvement of student performance.

Test on small scale before wider implementation. Research validation. Field tested.

2. Don't install any approach without making projections about student learning.

The benefits of the approach must be measurable. Tests are needed to determine success. The tests should be "do it" tests, one that requires actual reading, answering questions, working math problems, etc (not multiple choice).

3. Don't install any practice without monitoring it and comparing performance in the classroom with projections.

formative assessment. Installed programs should be limited to a reasonable period of time such as no more than an hour aday for reading. The monitoring should deal with what the teachers do and how it relates to what the students have learned. Is the projected material being presented on schedule? Do the teacherfs need help? Is the program being followed faithfully? Are the kids mastering the material in the projected time.

4. Don't install an approach without having a back-up plan.

5. Don't maintain practices that are obviously not working as planned.

6. Don't blame parents, kids, or other extraneous factors if the plan fails.

The only factor that affects the plan is whether the kids and teacher are in attendance on a regular basis."If the teaching failed, it was because the teaching failed, not beacause the parents didn't get involved."



on manipulatives
The same problem exists with manipulatives. Kids play with rods that represent different values--based on the length of the rod. Kids can use these rods to perform a variety of "act-outs" that are consistent with complicated math notions, such as the idea that 10x2 equals 5X4, but the kids doing the acting-out are typically not learning the relationship. They're simply making one group of rods the same length as the other group. The great meanings that they're deriving are not in their minds but in the imagination of the educational observer.

Direct work with symbols and notations of math is a far safer method of teaching relationships because symbols are consistent with far fewer misinterpretations than noisy and often time-consuming act-outs. The [NCTM] Standards do not favor pencil-and-paper work, however, because such work implies skills, and the Standards are very ambivalent about skills.

War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse, p. 115



on the shelf life of learned material
Typically about 60 school days pass before any topic is revisited. Stated differently, the spiral curriculum is exposure, not teaching. You don't "teach" something and put it back on the shelf for 60 days. It doesn't have a shelf-life of more than a few days. It would be outrageous enough to do that with one topic-- let alone all of them.

...Don't they know that if something is just taught, it will atrophy the fast way if it is not reinforced, kindled, and used? Don't they know that the suggested "revisiting of topics" requires putting stuff that has been recently taught on the shelf where it will shrivel up? Don't they know that the constant "reteaching" and "relearning" of topics that have gone stale from three months of disuse is so inefficient and impratical that it will lead not to "teaching" but to mere exposure? And don't they know that when the "teaching" becomes mere exposure, kids will understandably figure out that they are not expected to learn and that they'll develop adaptive attitudes like, "We're doing this ugly geometry again, but don't worry. It'll soon go away and we won't see it for a long time"?

The Underachieving Curriculum judged the problem with the spiral curriculum is that is lacks both intensity and focus. "Perhaps the greatest irony is that a curricular construct conceived to prevent the postponing of teaching many important subjects on the grounds that they are too difficult has resulted in a treatment of mathematics that has postponed, often indefinitely, the attainment of much substantive content at all."

War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse, pp. 108-9




what people know and don't know

I was saying in a Comment on the Smartest Tractor thread that there are many aspects of DI & formative assessment everyone already knows. They just don't know they know...they probably haven't realized that what they know about DI & formative assessment amounts to an entire alternative educational philosophy, or would if they filled in the gaps.

But this 60-day figure is a statistic people really do not possess.

I had a funny experience with this at a PTSA meeting once. I was running the after-school program (this would be the program in which I hired myself to teach Singapore Math, btw). All of the program chairs were meeting to be filled in about forms, money, procedures, etc.

When the question of kids who couldn't afford the fees for the after-school program arose, the president said that the PTSA picks up the tab. The president said the teachers knew about the policy and would steer these children to us (something like that).

One of the volunteers said the teachers didn't know about it. She'd worked with a teacher the year before who had no idea this option existed. The president looked annoyed, and said, 'We sent them an email at the beginning of the year.'

That was a striking moment, because here we were, highly educated ourselves, devoted to our kids' schooling, and everyone in the room appeared to believe that if you've told someone something once they've learned it.

I think this is a common perception; I often have it myself. I'll think, 'I told him/her/them that already.'

I should know better.

It's true that in job situations—in any situation where you're responsible for hearing what people tell you, writing it down, and remembering and acting on it—people can say something once and expect it to stick.

But that's not the norm, especially when you're talking about one email sent to teachers at the beginning of the school year when they're swamped.

This is a factoid that needs to get out there.




comments...


HelicopterParentsPart3 10 Dec 2005 - 13:55 CatherineJohnson



04wcol.583.jpg



source:
Staying Within the Lines on Homework help


I spent years reading about how women (or blacks) internalized the culture's view of them.

Ed reminded me yesterday that this is called false consciousness.

Parents have false consciousness.

Here's an article, written by a parent, all about the Bad Things Parents Do when their children go to school. The author lives here in Westchester; she's in one of the river towns. Hastings, Dobbs, or Ardsley, can't remember which. That makes her a neighbor.

LISA JACOBSON runs a tutoring business, Inspirica, in Manhattan, and she has seen parents at their worst, their most enmeshed, their pushiest. Parents who do their children's art projects for them, so the third-grade classroom looks, she said, "like a gallery at MoMA." Parents who tinker with science labs and correct math homework and edit English essays until the child does not recognize more than a comma in an opening sentence.

Gee. It's those Pushy Parents again. The ones I keep hearing about here in Irvington.

I wonder why all those Pushy Parents are spending hours of their lives doing their children's art projects.

Might it be because if they don't do their child's projects the child will be given a large, prominently displayed 'D' for all the world to see, called up to the teacher's desk, asked loudly, 'Are you even trying to do the work?' and sent off to the cafeteria to be taunted by the entire 6th grade class?

I wonder.

Back when my sons were younger, the rule was that they did the "content" and I would help out with the cutting and the coloring. It just didn't seem worth the extra hours they would spend wrestling with scissors and crayons. So after my older son drew his poster for social studies intricately mapping the route from the school to his house, I colored the roads black and the treetops green. And once he had completed his essay for French about the Arc de Triomphe, I took a razor and cobbled a three-dimensional model of that landmark from foam-backed board. (For the record, he lost points for neatness on the map poster I colored, and while his French essay earned an A, my foam representation got only a B.)

Does this passage offer a clue?

A parent-created art project earns a B.

Question.

What grade does a child-created art project earn?

As it happens, I have the answer, since I've just run that experiment.

Here's how it comes out. Other parents stay up all night doing their child's feature story/persuasive essay/major research product. (Seriously. One mother told me she had to pull an all-nighter to get it done. Good for her. She's as furious at Mrs. Roth as I am, btw, and has been hovering on the brink of Going To The Principal for some weeks now.)

Your child writes his own feature story.

Your child receives a bright red D, is berated in front of his classmates, is taunted at recess, spends a week crying at home every night.

Meanwhile you drop work on your Actual Job, the one you need to pay your monster property taxes to support the school, in order to steal time to launch a major offensive against the school you're working so hard to support.

Question.

What was the smart play here?

Stay up all night writing your child's paper and be done with it, or let your child write his own paper, after which all he** breaks loose and you get to spend the next 6 weeks dealing with it. And that's 6 weeks if you're lucky.

On the one hand, I am well positioned to help with their writing. Not to do it for them, but to read what they write and send them back to revise. On the other hand, is that helping or hurting? Can a teacher, however well intentioned, possibly give scores of children the same attention that I can give my own? Am I cheating my boys more by stepping in or standing back? Should the roles of parent and professional ever be mixed?

False consciousness!

The Core Question is not Should the roles of parent and professional ever be mixed?

The Core Question is What is my child learning at school, if anything?

My fifth grader's teacher has specifically asked us not to help," said Jacqueline Ghosen, who also has a fourth grader, and who is more than able to help with math because she teaches business classes at the University at Buffalo School of Management. "Her thought is that if the children are not getting the concept, she is not teaching it well," she said. "But if our child gets it wrong, regardless of whose fault it is, he still gets a lower homework grade. Also, if he is the only one who didn't get the concept, she is not going to reteach it."

That's a problem, alright.

Two words: formative assessment

So every night Ms. Ghosen and her husband spend at least three hours reviewing their sons' math, one equation at a time, telling them how many problems are wrong and sending the children back to find the mistakes themselves.

A big, fat, red 'A' to Ms. Ghosen and her husband for logical reasoning.

If the teacher isn't teaching to mastery, somebody has to.

Who's it going to be?

Other teachers have the opposite request: they want parents to take the reins. Ms. Jacobson recalls a recent parent-teacher conference where she was told "that the only way to keep kids achieving at the high level expected by the school district is to teach at school and then have the kids go home and be drilled and helped and tutored by the parents."

Another big, fat, red 'A' to Ms. Jacobson's teacher for logical reasoning.

This teacher would no doubt thrive in a DI system.

She is not teaching in a DI system.

So she's leveled with the parents. If the school isn't teaching to mastery somebody has to do it.

Unless you have a live-in tutor (that's another story) it's going to be you. Us. The parents.

The real story here, the story that should have been written, is the story of why the schools aren't teaching to mastery.

She's looking at the symptom of school failure.

Not the source.


p.s.

I just spent a couple of seconds looking at that picture.

It's great, isn't it?

Totally undermines the article, something I've seen more than once.

Here we have an anxious child, bewildered by the indecipherable schoolwork he's supposed to complete at home, on his own, with neither competent instruction nor help. The teacher has written some stuff on the board, or the child and a couple of classmates have discovered some stuff in a small group, and now he's supposed to know it.

And here we have a mother glaring at the books her school has sent home—glaring from clear across the room. She's also looking semi-bewildered, but bewildered in a mad way, not a say way.

Wait! she's saying. Is it a 'feature story'? Is it a 'persuasive essay'? Is it a 'major research PRODUCT'?

Plus, she's so ticked off she has apparently acquired the ability to project herself across the room telepathically, double in size, and change colors; she's so ticked off she's turning into THE HULK.

I could send this out as a Christmas picture.


Of course the good news is that parents who possess supernatural powers terrify school administrators.


a personality change, too

Plus the mom was a happy, nice, non-hovering, non-helicopter parent before she got a look at the incomprehensible junk they sent home for her child to do.

I think the TIMES should forget about writing articles, and just have the artists draw the stories.


helicopter parents, part 1
helicopter parents, part 2
helicopter parents, part 3
helicopter parents at the AFT
news from nowhere, part 6 (AP students)
helicopter parents of the word, unite
helicopter parents of the world, unite part 2a (t-shirts)
MiddleWeb says hovering is good





comments...


KumonWriting 10 Dec 2005 - 18:48 CatherineJohnson


I've been forgetting to thank Carolyn for our new categories:

  • Teaching Writing

  • Homeschooling

Thank you!

This will be the first entry under writing.


learning to write with KUMON Reading

I've mentioned that Ben Franklin taught himself to write persuasive essays by reverse engineering other people's persuasive essays.

He'd cut apart the sentences (IIRC), then try to reassemble them in proper sequence.

I've tried this myself. It's much harder than it sounds.

KUMON Reading (which I think is a superb program) does something similar, which I suspect would help any child develop a mature expository writing style.

Here it is:

Rearrange the words to complete the sentences.

1) A rocket is a spacecraft __________________________________.
[ that / space / allows / to / reach/ humans / outer ]

2) __________________________________ ,
the probe is navigated from afar.
[ are / humans / as / aboard / there / no ]

3) The universe is __________________________________ .
[ exist / matter / space / and / all / where ]

4) __________________________________
the scientist boasted.
[ now / we / " / " / have / technology / the / , ]


source:
KUMON Reading worksheet E1 77a (5th grade)


answers:

1) A rocket is a spacecraft that allows humans to reach outer space.

2) As there are no humans aboard, the probe is navigated from afar.

3) The universe is where all space and matter exist.

4) "We now have the technology," the scientist boasted.


This is sophisticated prose, and it's difficult to teach to children, or to students of any age. Left to his own devices, no 5th grader—these are 5th grade worksheets—is going to produce sentences like these.

Doing this exercise forces the child to focus on the 'smallest units' of writing, words and punctuation marks.

It also directs the child's attention to the 'Exactly Right Words,' to see that the difference between the best composition and the next-best is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug (wasn't that the Mark Twain analogy)?

Christopher, for instance, constructed sentence number 4 in this way:

"Now we have the technology," the scientist boasted.

That's perfectly fine. It's grammatically correct; it makes sense.

But it's not as elegant as 'We now have the technology,' and in fact it doesn't work as well with the verb 'boasted.' This is a subtle point. Offhand I can't think of a better way to make it (or of any way to make it at all, as a matter of fact).

The same principle holds with number 3. It would be grammatically correct to write, The universe is where all matter and space exist. But it wouldn't be as good

I would imagine that the only time in school students are taught to pay such close attention to language would be in reading and writing poetry. Not expository prose. (If anyone knows expository writing programs that do teach the subtleties of style, let us know.)


learning to read expository prose

I've often read educators saying that, in 4th grade, children must begin to read for content.

Unfortunately, they haven't been taught to do this. The reading programs of elementary schools are fiction, fiction, and more fiction, along with a personal narrative or two. Children aren't taught to read and interpret expository prose.

Another missing piece.


Andrew to KUMON

I'm starting Andrew in KUMON math today. Mr. Liu saw him in action last week, and told me to bring him at 4.

In preparation, I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon chanting persistent and patient under my breath.


do narrative reading skills transfer to expository reading?

The Direct Instruction folks say no, which would be my guess:

Narrative reading skills do not readily transfer to expository reading.

Narrative and expository texts have been found to have differential effects upon readers, with narrative being easier to comprehend than expository (Zabrucky & Ratner, 1992.) The ability to comprehend and formulate expository prose is essential for achievement in school (Seidenberg, 1989).



articles, marketing material from EPS, College Board report

Seidenberg, P.L. (1989). Relating text processing research to reading and writing instruction for learning disabled students. Learning Disabilities Focus 5 (1), pp. 4-12.

Zabrucky, K. & Ratner, H.H. (1992). Effects of passage type on comprehension monitoring and recall in good and poor readers. Journal of Reading Behavior 24, pp. 373-391.

Writing Across the Curriculum Series by Patrice Cardiel, Ronda Cole, Mary Kay Hobbs, et. al. By Anna Cimochowski, Ph.D. research supporting the Writing Across the Curriculum Series published by EPS. You may have to Google to find it. This is marketing material, but often these papers are useful.

Report of The College Board National Commission on Writing in America's Schools and Colleges, pdf file to download at EPS.




comments...


CreativeKumon 10 Dec 2005 - 22:44 CatherineJohnson


Well, Andrew is launched on his KUMON career, which means I should officially stop calling myself a writer & start calling myself a KUMON worksheet grader.

Remember that mugged-by-reality mom Susan told us about? The one who threw herself into progressive education and didn't find out 'til 7th grade that her children weren't learning?

One of my favorite passages from that story was this one:

As full understanding of how progressivism had failed my children finally dawned, I was furious - more with myself than anyone else. But, I can no longer spare the emotional energy which anger consumes. It takes all I've got to stay attuned to three children from 3:00 to 10:30 p.m. sufficiently to correct Kumon math, direct grammar remediation, go over their SRA reading comprehension work, monitor the writing process program, and check assigned homework for the knowledge gaps which have undermined so much prior learning...and somehow attend to the non-tutoring aspects of parenting...


I'm there.

I'm so there that tonight I'm shaking in my boots because Christopher moved up levels today (from C to D) and I forgot to get a copy of the D Level answer book. This means I'll have to do all the calculations on my own worksheets and all the calculations on Christopher's worksheets in order to check his answers.

I don't think that's going to be possible.


next thought

We should find out what writing program that mom is using. (Though I tend to hate anything calling itself 'writing process.' No idea whether that's a rational prejudice or not.)


Mr. Liu meets Andrew

Every once in awhile we get going on the creativity gap Asians seem to feel separates them from us.

I tend to think there is a creativity gap, mainly because there's a bipolar gap, and bipolar disorder is associated with creativity.

John and I said something along these lines 10 years ago (we said there was a hyperactivity gap, to be precise), and since then others have begun to talk about the manic roots of American creativity.

For instance:

0743243447.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg


So today I saw it.

I took Andrew to meet Mr. Liu.

Andrew is adding simple sums now, and I took his schoolwork to show Mr. Liu. Andrew can't talk and he can't write, so in class he uses number stamps & an ink pad to record his answers. I have number stamps here at home, and I took those with me, too.

I showed his work and the stamps to Mr. Liu. He peered down at them, and said, in his quiet voice, "I don't think he can do KUMON, because KUMON is all writing."

I said, "Well, he can use the stamps." I was holding the stamp set in my hand, and Mr. Liu was looking at it.

Mr. Liu said, "We don't have stamps here," and then looked partway around the room, as if to say, "You can see that we have no stamp sets."

I said, "I have stamps."

Mr. Liu carried on frowning at the stamps. He was thinking. I felt like a Martian, which is how I felt the first day I met Mr. Liu and presented my middle-aged self as a KUMON candidate.

Somehow we maneuvered past this obstacle, and Mr. Liu found himself asking whether Andrew should start with the counting pages. This was an innovation. No KUMON instructor asks a parent where a child should start. The KUMON instructor gives the child a placement test, and places the child according to the results.

That's what I thought Mr. Liu would do. That was obviously what Mr. Liu had thought he would do, too. Now, however, he was at a loss. Andrew was starting to jump, slap himself on the side of the head, and scream, which wasn't helping matters.

This is where it's good to be a touch hypomanic.

Mr. Liu was looking more doubt-filled by the moment, but when you're a touch hypomanic other people's doubt is not a problem.

I asked for some samples of the Counting Level worksheets, and Mr. Liu obligingly handed me a sample book containing all 200 of them. I started showing them to Andrew.

Boy, can that child count. He's way past the counting level.

I was able to find this out thanks to my Native Creativity. I would flip open to a page at random (I hope Mr. Liu didn't have to witness that), ask Andrew to count the items, and then have him pick the appropriate number stamp but stop him before he actually stamped the page and ruined it.

So now I have KUMON math for Andrew, too.

Mr. Liu decided to try Andrew on some of the number-writing sheets, which I'm game for. Andrew is starting to write (physically write, I mean) and if I could get him on track to write on KUMON sheets that would be a good thing. I'm thinking, Let's forget all this creativity stuff, and just have Andrew write the numbers down on the worksheets like a normal human being.

We'll see.


Andrew10-01-05.jpg



update

"What was really amazing was the speed with which the Americans adapted themselves….They were assisted in this by their tremendous practical and material sense and by their lack of all understanding for tradition and useless theories."

- Erwin Rommel, 1943 Andrewsullivan.com May 7, 2003


AlphaSmart
AlphaSmart reviews
AlphaSmart (& letter to LA Times)
AlphaSmart & Andrew & KUMON
AlphaSmarts reduced 30%





comments...


TimesArticleOnNewNYMathStandards 11 Dec 2005 - 04:55 CarolynJohnston

Apparently things have really changed in my home state (New York) since I was a high school student there.

In my day, there were Regents tests in Algebra 1, geometry, and Algebra 2 in 9th, 10th, and 11th grade respectively. Now there are the Regents Math A and Math B tests. I don't know what those are, but the Regents are in the process of changing New York's math standards right now, because according to an article in the New York Times Education section, two-thirds of the kids in New York State who took the Math A test in 2003 failed it.

New York State's Board of Regents voted yesterday to begin testing high school students under new mathematics standards in 2007-8 after a survey of school officials showed most had not adequately prepared for the new curriculum and favored having one more year.

The Regents, who voted unanimously, also took into consideration the concerns of test-writers, who said that a reliable exam would take about two years to prepare.

"Certainly, the majority of kids are not in a program that's totally based on the new standards right now, but will be next year," said James A. Kadamus, the state's deputy commissioner of education. "It's a big system and it takes a long time for everyone to get the message and get on board."

Mr. Kadamus continued, "We've learned that rushing into exams can cause serious problems."

The Regents began rethinking the math curriculum in 2003, when two-thirds of the high school students who took the Regents Math A exam failed, prompting an surge of complaints and criticism from parents, students and teachers.

State education officials rescored the test, a high school graduation requirement, and appointed a math standards committee to analyze what went wrong.

The committee, made up of teachers, experts and administrators, looked deeply into the state's approach to math and also researched math programs around the country and the world. It recommended - and the Regents adopted - sweeping changes in the way high school math is taught, reorganizing the subject into three one-year courses, each with a single focus.

The new standards, which were adopted in March, reversed an approach that had been popular since the 1980's: the integration of many different areas of math into each grade. They also brought New York back into sync with most of the rest of the nation - freshmen usually study algebra, sophomores learn geometry, and juniors study algebra II and trigonometry.

The new curriculum is also intended to emphasize conceptual understanding over rote learning. Although most school officials preferred to begin the new testing in 2007-8, the Department of Education had recommended waiting even longer, until 2008-9.

The boldface in that last paragraph is mine. The rest of the article is here. Sounds as though the fuzzies are gaining territory in New York; can they really be that far behind California, or is this a second set of math standards changes in New York State that attempts to emphasize conceptual understanding over rote learning?



comments...


PlugAndChugInSixthGrade 11 Dec 2005 - 21:56 CatherineJohnson


Quick question.

My thoughts about Christopher's math class are starting to cohere.

Here's what I'm wondering.

The chapter tests are plug and chug: they're 4-pages long, small fonts; at least 25 questions to finish in 45 minutes (with work shown, so no super shortcuts or 'just knowing' the answer allowed).

Is that a good idea?

As things stand, the chapter tests have the glaring problem of offering virtually no space on the test itself for kids with large, immature handwriting to do side calculations—and so far the teacher hasn't told anyone it's OK to use scratch paper. I've sent an email asking if Christopher can use scratch paper; no response as yet.

I don't know if the teacher doesn't allow scratch paper, or if it's just that no child has asked.

Ed and I are asking. ('Asking' as in formally-requesting-slash-demanding.) The kids need scratch paper and plenty of it, especially given the fact that the elementary school did not see fit to teach handwriting. (The BRILLIANT Ms. Duque was ferocious on this point: MAYBE if you'd taught them HANDWRITING IN THE SECOND GRADE, she would fume, THEY COULD LINE UP COLUMNS OF FIGURES IN THE FIFTH.)

Good point.

We're prepared to go to war on the subject of scratch paper if we have to, so I figure scratch paper will soon be part of the test-taking scene in Phase 4 math.

We'll see.

(If we don't get scratch paper we'll demand testing for occupational therapy & we'll bring in Christopher's vision therapy records to prove he has a visual processing disorder & make everyone read them and hold meetings about them—and that's just what I come up with off the top of my head. Have I mentioned that once, back in Los Angeles, when the special ed people were playing hardball about a placement we wanted for Jimmy, we told them, laughingly, that we were thinking if we couldn't get the placement we'd ask for full inclusion? I think I was the one who said it; then I chuckled. Our attorney, who was present, probably chuckled, too. The special ed people smiled wanly. I'd read about people smiling wanly in novels, but until that moment I'd never seen a person actually do it. We got the placement.)

Back to Christopher's math class. Apart from the mechanics of having 11 year olds with terrible handwriting take a plug and chug test, the course itself has problems, namely little or no formative assessment and no practicing to mastery ever.

But suppose all of those things were in place. Suppose systematic formative assessment were happening every week or every day, all students were practicing all skills to mastery, and the kids had all the scratch paper they needed to do a plug and chug math test in their lopsided, too-big handwriting.

Would a plug-and-chug test be a good idea?

Does plug-and-chug testing tell you the students not only have mastery, but have mastery to the point they can get through a 4-page test without folding?

Is that important as you head towards algebra? (I'm not asking whether mastery is essential; it is. What I'm asking about, I think, is stamina.....or is it?)

I have no idea.


observation from Tracy W

Tracy just left a comment that made me realize my question isn't clear.

At the moment, I'm not concerned about the heavily procedural nature of the course. There's probably too much teaching of 'math tricks' like cross-multiplication without reference to the general rules that make shortcuts possible, which of course means you're going to be giving the kids plug and chug tests, since plug and chug is mostly what you're teaching.

But at the moment I'm wondering only about the question of giving a 'killer test' to 11 year olds. (I don't use the word 'killer' to prejudice the answer, believe it or not.)

I assume that the reason the teacher does give killer tests is that she's whipping through a vast amount of material in a very short space of time, so there's a huge amount of material to cover in each chapter test.

However, if that's the only reason she's giving massively long tests (massively long for kids this age who are new to the material) she could just as well test all of the material through frequent administration of shorter quizzes and tests.

I'm wondering if there's a specific gain from giving a long, hard test in pre-algebra. It strikes me that there may be, but on the other hand I can't say what it would be.




comments...


ChristmasTree 11 Dec 2005 - 22:35 CatherineJohnson




christmas.tree-thumb.gif





comments...

JDGraphicLongDivision 12 Dec 2005 - 20:31 CatherineJohnson




groupsizedivisor.JPG



We're going to have to create a separate category thread just for J.D.'s graphics.

They're incredible.

The issue of page splatter is becoming terribly important around here. I came up with a new study approach for Christopher this weekend, which involves my going through his textbook and pulling out each and every small skill the chapter assumes and/or teaches.

Trying to get him ready for a quiz today, I found 21 separate skills in just 4 segments of Chapter 5.

This means I had to find problems from the book that would give him practice on those skills specifically.

I couldn't do it. I stared at the book, flipped pages, read pages, skimmed pages—I couldn't do it.

I knew the problems I needed were there.

I couldn't see them.

Ed couldn't see them, either.

Finally we both gave up, and wrote our own.

Under normal circumstances that would be fine.

But this course is going so badly at this point that we're in a battle just to get Christopher through to summer, when I can reteach. Everything is math tricks & memory; the challenge is simply to remember huge amounts of material being presented to the class day in and day out, with no apparent rhyme or reason. We're down to zero conceptual understanding, and Christopher has clearly lost all interest in math. By the end of last year, and over the summer, he was telling me, 'I like math.' That sentiment is now gone. He's just getting through it, and so are we.

Since this is now a Memory Course, we need to give him the exact practice problems he's been shown in class. There's no transferring knowledge, because there's no knowledge. He has to practice what he saw in class, regurgitate it on the test (yes, I said 'regurgitate), and get through to summer when I can re-teach the course.

My point being: I need to be able to see the textbook.

If J.D. were in charge of designing textbooks, I'd be able to see them.


hoist by my own petard

So....um.....I'm seeing exactly why people around here thought TRAILBLAZERS would be a big improvement.

TRAILBLAZERS may be a big improvement over this.


source:
J D on Houghton Mifflin

keywords: JD textbooks textbook design graphic design




comments...


AleksGraphic 12 Dec 2005 - 20:51 CatherineJohnson


I have no idea what this is, but I like it:


ALEKSalgebra.jpg



I'm going to read the Knowledge Space (pdf file) paper ALEKS is based on when I get time. ALEKS' creator, Jean-Claude Falmagne, sounds interesting.


a parent's experience with ALEKS
ALEKS Graphic
formative assessment on wheels
ParentPundit uses ALEKS to fix Everyday Math
ALEKS question
ALEKS assessment coming right up





comments...

NewPlanForPractice 12 Dec 2005 - 21:09 CatherineJohnson


I've got some great Comments to pull up front, and will get to those ASAP.

But first, I wanted to put this out there in case any of you have ideas.

Christopher's math course is now officially a disaster.

For Christopher, it's pure memorization of fragmented procedures that have nothing to do with each other. That's how he's experiencing it.

We'll talk to the teacher and the principal, and they'll do what they can. But it won't be enough. We need a do-over.

So we've moved into the minimize-the-damage phase. We have to get Christopher through the course in one piece, so I can reteach the material next summer. We have to make sure he doesn't get a C, D, or F, and we have to prevent him from deciding he hates math, if possible. (Actually, he could take a C and stay in the track, I think. I'll find out.)

This weekend, trying to think what we need to do just to get through 'til spring, I decided to start giving Christopher timed practice. The tests are 'plug and chug'; they're about speed and accuracy and the ability to memorize huge quantities of (seemingly) unrelated material.

Here's what I came up with; I'd appreciate any feedback you might have.

I went through the sections of the chapter that would be on the quiz and pulled out each component task that was either assumed or taught by the book.

There were 21 separate skills in 4 Lessons.

Then I wrote out 5 or 6 problems in each of the 21 categories, and had Christopher do them while I timed him on my running watch.

Side note: on top of everything else, he's now developing test anxiety. Just what we need.

We pointed out he doesn't have test anxiety for KUMON, and he didn't have test anxiety with Saxon......so he won't have test anxiety for pre-algebra, either, if he knows the material cold.

So.

He did his 6-problem timed sets, and I checked them.

If he could do them top-speed and get everything right, we moved on. I'll have to figure out some way to fit in distributed practice, since this stuff is going to be out of his head the minute he finishes the test. But he looked like he was OK for the quiz.

If he made a lot of mistakes, we did another set.

We also talked strategy.

We told him he's very fast, much faster than he needs to be. He did one set of 6 calculations—reducing fractions to lowest terms—in 21 seconds. In fact he has close to two minutes per problem, and if he's doing 6 calculations in 21 seconds he's going to make mistakes he can't afford.

I did that with KUMON at first. I pounded through the worksheets as fast as I possibly could, and I made lots more mistakes than I needed to. Then I read somewhere, possibly in one of the TIMSS studies, that this is yet another difference between U.S. & Japanese students. U.S. students sprint through their tests and finish every problem, getting lots of things wrong; Japanese students apparently follow a systematic, and more deliberate strategy of doing problems they know how to do, and getting those right. I guess it's a quality over quantity thing...In any case, it's definitely a useful skill to learn how to pace yourself. I had no idea about this until I started doing KUMON worksheets. Sometimes, now, I deliberately slow myself down.

So we started coaching him on slowing down.

We also told him to look at the quiz when he gets it, find the questions he can do, and do them. Skip anything that stumps you; just go past it. Come back if you have time. Etc.

He's due home from school any minute, so I'll ask him how the quiz went. Then we'll see how he did when his teacher grades it.

But if any of you have thoughts on teaching a child to take timed tests on material he doesn't understand and learned only a few days before, I'm all ears.

Thanks.


existential question

Ed is champing at the bit to ask the principal exactly how he sees kids going from TRAILBLAZERS to this course.

I'm so horrified by the whole thing, I don't even want to watch a school administrator try to handle that question.


good news

Christopher just came in saying the quiz was "extremely easy."

'Extremely easy' means he knew the material and did well. At least, so far 'extremely easy' has always meant that he did well. His ability to judge his performance breaks down in the middling realm, but at the extremes, he seems to know.

We'll see.

The teacher gave him scratch paper.

um.....I mean scrap paper.




comments...


ExtendedProblem6 13 Dec 2005 - 01:14 CatherineJohnson


What is the digit in the hundreds places of the sum of the following addition problem:

7 + 77 + 777 + 7777 + ... + 77777777777777777777

(The final number has 20 7s)

Thanks—


dingbatWSJ2.jpg


extended response problem from IL state test
extended response problem 1
extended response problem 2
extended response problem 6
extended response problems 7, 8, 9
direct instruction & the rigor conundrum
Dan's daughter reacts to extended response problem
defensive teaching of Singapore bar models
open-ended problems in math ed
problems that teach - "Action Math"
email to the principal





comments...


DivisibilityBySeven 13 Dec 2005 - 13:40 CatherineJohnson


I'm way too frazzled to think about divisibility by seven at the moment, but I bet some of you guys are up for it.....

divisibility by seven


Here's the Science News writeup (probably subscription-only):

  • Consider the following multiple of 7:
        6,049,344
  • Separate the number into pairs of digits, starting from the right.
        6 04 93 44
  • Calculate the difference between each pair of digits and the nearest upper or lower multiple of 7, beginning with the first pair at the right. For the first pair, use the lower multiple, for the second use the upper multiple, for the third use the lower multiple, and so on.
        44 – 42 = 2; 98 – 93 = 5; 04 – 0 = 4; 7 – 6 = 1
  • Write out the resulting digits in the order in which they were calculated.
        2541
  • Repeat the process on the digits 2541.
        25  41
        41 – 35 = 6; 28 – 25 = 3
        63
  • The final pair, 63, is a multiple of 7. Hence, the original number must also be a multiple of 7.





comments...

ScienceWithoutCalculus 13 Dec 2005 - 14:49 CatherineJohnson


Samantha just left this comment:

Incidentally, from what I've read about science, it's near impossible to teach real science without calculus already - most of what they doing in school before students do calculus is just junk science.

Is this true?

Offhand, it sounds true to me.

But I have no idea.




comments...


KenOnSchoolDecline 13 Dec 2005 - 15:08 CatherineJohnson

from Ken:

But he didn't think what I was doing was necessary. His parents didn't do it, other parents aren't doing it to the crazed degree I'm doing it.

This is what catches most parents off guard. They're expecting their kids to be going to a school just like they did, but that school doesn't exist anymore and the schools over the past few decades have systematically removed almost every traditional indicia of reliability.

First, there is rampant grade inflation, so getting an A no longer means that that the kid has mastered the material. At one time if a kid was bringing home As and Bs, the parents knew he was making suitable progress and learning. That's no longer true.

Second, we have ridiculously lowered academic standards which combine with my first point to guarantee no parent knowing if their kid is making appropriate progress.

Third, they've jettisoned the traditional curriculum which had its faults but was successful in roughly teaching the college bound portion of the curve by and large. Today, they've abandoned almost all the foundation skills like math facts and procedures, grammar, spelling, and vocabulary and jumped straight to heavy dosages of math problem solving (for discovery) and writing.

Today a kid can get an A in math and not know his times tables or the long division algorithm and an A in English without knowing the rules of grammar and usage or how to spell.

That is why parents now have to hover.



I've reached the point of having no clue.

I'm always suspicious of 'golden age' hypotheses, which is not to dismiss Ken's observations. He's certainly captured the way I feel about our public schools.

update: Ken isn't making a golden age argument, obviously.

This is an example of why writing a blooki isn't the same thing as writing a book. If this were a book, not a blooki, some editor would force me to figure out exactly what I mean when I say I'm 'suspicious' of 'golden age hypotheses.'

Of course, that's why it's more fun writing a blooki.

But I don't know. Our situation here seems almost bizarrely out of whack. The mugged-by-reality moment for me—I thought I'd already been mugged by reality—was the discovery that Irvington Middle School kids are going into high school not knowing how to write.

I'd been so (hyper)focused on math that I hadn't given writing a second thought. Ed and I have published 6 books between us, so I was thinking......nothing. I take writing for granted.

I'd been focused on math because math does seem hard, and because our school doesn't have an accelerated math course for high achievers. All we've got is an oversubscribed mostly-rote-memorization course for the Gifted and Talented.

When I take a step back, I see that I have a bright, school-loving child attending a phenomenally wealthy public school that is failing to teach math and English language arts competently. I see fury—that's not too strong a word—amongst the parents; I see the wealthiest parents pulling their kids out and sending them to private schools at $26,000 a year.



our school was supposed to be the solution

Ken's description of the decline in public schools, while it seems right to me, doesn't fit our middle school.

Actually, it does. If you took a picture of the schools Ken is describing, then printed the photo negative instead of the color print, you'd have it.

In place of dumbed-down content, we have rigor.

In place of grade inflation, grade deflation. You want a challenging curriculum for your kid? Fine! Take a D! Take two Ds! In one week!

That's what we've got.

When we see the principal, we'll be told that Phase 4 math is a rigorous, accelerated course Christopher just can't handle. He should move to Phase 2/3, the principal will say.

I'm calling this one right now: the principal will say Christopher can't move out of Mrs. Roth's class, but he can move out of Ms. Kahl's class. I predict.

Irvington Middle School talks the talk.

'Rigor,' 'tough,' 'major research product.' (oops, no such thing! We call that a research paper in the writing biz.)

We're back to the connection between dumbed-down and roughed-up. There are no boundaries, no limits on what can be done to the curriculum or to the students. You can give 2nd grade arithmetic problems to a 6th grader, or you can send them home some modular arithmetic for their parents to do. Anything's possible!

You can assign a feature story/persuasive essay/major research product to an 11 year old, and give him a D when he hands in a feature story that isn't also a persuasive essay/major research product. Then you can haul him up to your desk and say loudly, in front of the class, 'Are you doing the work at all?'

You can do that because you're rigorous.

I saw this for the first time at the Phase Four Math Revolution Parent Meeting last year, which I crashed. (Only parents of 6th graders were invited.) The parents were extremely agitated, because their kids were being mulched.

The faculty and administration stood their ground.

Why was the class so hard children were crying over their problem sets at night?

It was hard, because it was supposed to be hard.

"I want to challenge your child," the math chair said.

"I want your child to go out in the world and solve problems."

etc.

Afterwards I collared the new Asst Superintendent for Curriculum. "This is 6th grade math we're talking about," I said. "It's not brain surgery. Nobody needs to be crying about pre-algebra."

He agreed.

One mother was close to tears herself. "What are you going to do to repair these children's self esteem?" she asked.

The answer?

I'm quoting: "Why are your children so over-sensitive?"

That's what we're going to hear, about Christopher. Why is Christopher so sensitive? Why can't he handle the pressure?

Giving children work they don't know how to do, and grading them on the results, is an abdication of responsibility.

Anyone can 'challenge' a child.

If I want to challenge Christopher, I can click onto the Math Olympiads website and pull problems he can't do.

Challenging a child is easy.

It's teaching that's hard.


Same thing in constructivist math

Give kids the hay baler problem, and let them struggle. Voila. Rigor.

The hay baler problem is an adult abdicating responsibility for teaching real math and real reading and real writing. The child shoulders the load.

Strategically, of course, it's a slick move.

What can the parent say? The school's position is: Hey—I gave him the challenging material you people keep squawking about.

If you've got parents clamoring for 'rigor' and 'excellence,' and you don't know how to provide rigor and excellence, the smooth move is to dump huge quantities of challenging, rigorous stuff on the kids, and send them home to their parents, who love them. The parents teach their children what they need to know to do the work; when reactive teaching fails, as it will, they do the work themselves.

Either way, the school is off the hook, and the people actually teaching the kids are the bad guys. Think how the TIMES would play our story! Here we are, two parents with Ph.D.s talking to attorneys because our kid got Ds on his English papers.

Talk about hovering.


back on planet Earth

I think we've probably made a culture-wide association between 'academic rigor' and 'assigning work the kids can't do.'

But since I'm talking about my own situation, I'll say that Ed, who's more perceptive on issues of school governance than I am, thinks the story here is probably that the middle school has been the problem child for a long time.

This morning he was saying, Yes, there's a nationwide Problem with Education, but our own situation is probably some kind of weird exaggeration of that problem with roots in troubles we know nothing about.

Path dependency strikes again.

I'm sure he's right. We weren't having these problems in the elementary school, not even close. No one was, that we knew of. There are problems, sure. There's no integrated, articulated-across-grades curriculum. That's a problem. But the teachers are excellent, and the two teachers our kids had who weren't excellent didn't receive tenure. (I shouldn't overstate. There were a handful of teachers everyone complained about, but they were few and far between. I loved both principals.)

Since we've been here, I've been dimly aware that the principal of the middle school seems to keep.....changing. I think one principal may have left after one year. I wasn't paying enough attention (understatement) but the signs have never been good.

The high school, everyone universally says, is fantastic. Ed interviewed Irvington seniors applying to Princeton. They were amazing, and they credited the high school. We've heard this over and over again (and Irvington is ranked somewhere in the....top 150 high schools? Is that it? I forget.)

We know the principal, too; he's great.

So, seeing as how I would like to live inside of reality instead of out, I'm going with a blend of the Ken/Catherine/Ed narrative.

1. dumbed-down schools, grade inflation, no accountability (Ken)

2. fake rigor, grade deflation, parent all-nighters (Catherine)

3. toxic path dependency at IMS (Ed)

Whatever the story, it comes down to the same thing: we're the teachers.

Doesn't look like Kitchen Table Math will be going out of business any time soon.




comments...


AnimalsInTranslationInDiscoverMagazineBestBooks 13 Dec 2005 - 18:53 CatherineJohnson


Temple says Discover Magazine has chosen Animals in Translation as one of its Top Science Books of the Year (link to last year's list).

yay!

Plus the paperback came today.

I was going to take a picture of it with my dogs, but the camera battery is out of juice.


this is cool

I just went over to Barnes and Noble to pull a picture of the paperback, and found this:


Animalsholidaygift2.jpg


Animals in Translation is a recommended holiday gift.

Good.




comments...


GrowthModelForNclb 13 Dec 2005 - 23:25 CatherineJohnson


One of my goals is to acquire enough knowledge of statistics to form rough opinions on issues like the growth model Margaret Spellings, eduwonk, Jenny B & others are talking about.

I'm assuming the growth model is roughly analogous to a value-added measurement, a concept I would like to favor.

Roughly defined (I'll drop in better defintions you're likely to have), 'value-added' means value-added: did the teacher (class or curriculum) add any value to the student's education this school year?

At the end of the year, is the student substantially ahead of where he or she was at the beginning of the year?

Education Next has had some interesting material on value-added assessment. This article, which isn't the one I remember reading awhile back, is, I think, largely negative.

Value-added assessment has one signal merit: it is based on student progress, not on the level of achievement. Schools and teachers are accountable for how much students gain in achievement. They are not given credit for students entering at a high level or penalized when their students start far behind. In effect, value-added assessment “controls for” the influence of family income, ethnicity, and other circumstances on students’ initial level of achievement.




10b.gif



Mathematicians who specialize in measurement in the social sciences, together with experts in the construction and interpretation of tests—psychometricians—have devoted considerable attention to this matter. Their findings are highly unfavorable to value-added assessment.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Value-added assessment is important to me, and, I assume, to people like Steve, because we're living in districts where students do well on not-very-good state tests.

I don't often see this point made; typically people debate the issue of value-added assessment to low-income schools. My feeling is that it's just as important if not more so to high-income & middling-income schools.

I would like to see solid evidence that our kids are learning more each year, which I'm not sure I get with the state tests. If the New York state tests were radically more transparent, that would help matters, too. One of our doctors went on a rant one day about how she couldn't decipher the scoring system, and if she couldn't decipher the scoring system, nobody could decipher the scoring system. After that, I gave up.

I would also like to know whether it's possible to do value-added assessment of teacher performance. Is it statistically feasible to discover which teachers are spurring their students further and faster than others? Engelmann certainly thinks so.

Is it statistically less challenging to do a 'local' value-added assessment such as this?




comments...


TrustInSchools 14 Dec 2005 - 00:03 CatherineJohnson


Via eduwonk, Schooling America: How the Public Schools Meet the Nation’s Changing Needs by Patricia Albjerg Graham

Publisher's Weekly

"Our elementary, secondary, and higher education sectors are getting better, just not as rapidly or as completely as we would like." This guardedly optimistic assessment of the last century of American education characterizes Graham's erudite consideration of our nation's public schools. As an educator whose 50-year career has taken her from teaching social studies in Dismal Swamp, Virginia, to the deanship of the Harvard faculty of education and the directorship of the National Institute of Education, Graham's ability to speak from direct experience, whether about the tension between theory and practice in curricular reform, the struggle to diversify schools, or the effects of research funding on higher education, makes for a consistently engaging read, even if the topics discussed, on the surface, sound dry. Although her opinions on how America's educational system can improve seep into the writing, these are less central to the book than her lively retelling of developments in the public school system since 1900. Whether or not one shares her commitment to diversity and vision of education's role in shaping society, the historical material here will be of great interest to professional educators, policymakers and parents of school-age children.


This is why I find the public school system opaque.

It strikes me as entirely possible that her thesis is true. I just don't know.

One data point: Ed told me, this morning, that there's no question college students' writing has gotten much better over the 20-odd years he's been reading it at UCLA and NYU.

Interestingly, students can't write an argument. The content of student writing isn't better, in his experience. But the form is dramatically improved. (We're talking an elite group of students, obviously. Still, those are the students I'm specifically concerned about as a mom, so I'm glad to hear it.)

The idea that students are better at writing but no better at thinking is slightly scandalous to me, since I tend to think of form and content as reasonably inseparable.

But if that's what Ed is seeing, I believe him. After all, the reality of good writing expressing bad thinking is what the word 'glib' was invented to express.

Graham's blog is here.


update

During the last century, what we Americans wanted and what we got from our schools shifted through four distinct periods, which I call Assimilation, Adjustment, Access and Achievement. Last week we looked at the period of Assimilation covering the early years of the 20th century. This week I look at the middle years of the twentieth century, including WWII and the post-war years, which I call the Adjustment era. In coming weeks, I will address Access, the period after Brown v. Board of Education until 1983 and, finally, Achievement, the years from 1983 to the present day. The following pictures help illustrate this tale of shifting assignments to America's schools and their reluctance, sometimes wisely, to complete the new assignments as fully and promptly as the public and, later, policy-makers, wished.


It's certainly true that we here at Kitchen Table Math are in the Unhappy Achievement phase of edu-history.

I know I am, anyway.


declinism

Last fall, I think it was, there three different books about the decline and fall of France on the French bestseller list. I remember one was called something like France qui tombe, France that Falls (roughly).

The French call this school of thought declinism.




comments...


CommentsToCome 14 Dec 2005 - 01:43 CatherineJohnson


I have a boatload of Comments to get pulled up front.....which means it's going to take awhile.

I thought I'd mention that the reason I pull Comments up front is that a) I don't want casual visitors to miss the super-meaty ones and b) once a Comment is on the front page it's part of the Category thread, so anyone reading that thread will be sure to see it. (All Comments stay connected to the original blooki posts, but a person reading through the KUMON category, say, isn't necessarily going to have the patience to click on each post individually so he/she can read each Comments thread individually.

So these things need to come up front.....

I've finally begun disciplining myself to KEEP A LIST, and here's what I've got at the moment:

  • Rudbeckia Hirta on finding stats on colleges "Random factoid (before I disappear into a cloud of office hours, reviews, calming of panic, and then grading): if you want a statistical profile of a college/university (like graduation rates, etc.) search their web page for the Office of Institutional Research and look for the Common Data Set."

  • Doug on 'the margins'

  • J.D. email

  • Verghis on KUMON honor roll



If there are things I've forgotten, let me know.


other

Since I'm posting a public to-do list, I also need to:

  • locate Ken's reading test & post links everywhere

  • post links to FERPA (thank you, Rudbeckia)

  • post links to the Rewards Reading Series, which both Dan and Smartest Tractor have mentioned (Smartest Tractor has purchased SOPRIS' writing program, IIRC)

  • post ALL links to reading/writing materials on the how-to-teach-writing page

  • collect the science-teaching links from.....was it today? (it's all a blur!)



I should probably go ahead and buy DON'T MAKE ME THINK....




comments...

ReadingFluencyTable 14 Dec 2005 - 02:41 CatherineJohnson


AIMSWeb Growth Table Reading

We should all be keeping our eyes open for free and/or inexpensive ways parents can do their own assessments.

For math, remember that we have David Klein's problem sets, which he wrote to match the State of CA tests, and the Singapore Math assessment tests.

Looks like AIMSWeb may be what we need for reading.


No Child Left Behind No Parent Left in the Dark

I've just remembered this book (hope I can find my copy).

It's fantastic, invaluable.

Lists all the questions your teacher should be prepared to answer in a parent-teacher conference, including all the standardized tests the school will have given that year.

Our own teachers answered none of these questions, ever.

When I showed this book to my sister-in-law, who teaches in central IL, she took it for granted that all teachers routinely answer the questions the teacher-author of No Parent Left in the Dark recommends.


update—I found my copy. The author says 'there are tests' schools give children that take no more than an hour, and give you all the information you need to know about where exactly a child is in math achievement, and what & where the gaps are.

If he's in 5th grade, where is he in 5th grade? Does he score at 5.1 or 5.6? (Not sure what the decimal represents. I assume it's either one-tenth of the school year or 1 month.)

But he doesn't say what these tests are.

Is KeyMath one of them?

[pause]

wow

It is. Takes 35 to 50 minutes to administer.

I'm going to ask the guidance counselor to give Christopher the test. Heaven only knows what kind of response that will get.

Domains: Subtests assess content in three areas—Basic Concepts, Operations, and Applications.

Subtest names: Numeration, Rational Numbers, Geometry, Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division, Mental Computation, Measurement, Time and Money, Estimation, Interpreting Data, Problem Solving


Sounds good to me.




comments...

FearOfFlying 14 Dec 2005 - 04:22 CarolynJohnston

I just got back from a (short) trip to Seattle. While I was on the plane, I got to thinking about fear of flying (in the abstract), with which I've been afflicted for ten years or so. I decided it would be fun (and perhaps a bit cathartic) to write about it, even though it's completely off topic.

Six myths and comments about fear-of-flying

Myth 1: you either have it or you don't.

Not so. For many people, including me, it comes on suddenly after years of comfortable flying. In my case, it started when my son was 2 and I was starting to get worried about his development, and peaked when he was diagnosed at around 3. Since then, it's been getting better gradually (like Ben's problems) but hasn't gone away (like Ben's problems). Yes, I do think the phobia has something to do with those other things going on in my life.

I have known several people who developed intense fear-of-flying for a brief period of time, maybe a few months, and then had it vanish again just as suddenly. Mine came on suddenly, like theirs, but will it ever vanish? I should be so lucky.

Myth 2: only irrational people have fear-of-flying.

I wish that were so. I've learned a lot about flying from the scientific viewpoint in my ten years of phobia, and I always knew the statistics were outrageously in my favor. It helps at times to know this stuff, but doesn't cure the problem or even control it very well, if you've got it badly enough. The problem comes from some part of your brain that responds poorly to rational arguments. [Catherine here: we call this the AMYGDALA. I think.]

If I were rational about it, I'd hate landing as much as I hate taking off; but I don't, just because I'm so relieved to be landing.

Myth 3: drinking might help ease fear-of-flying.

I don't know if this helps anyone else, but on the one occasion I tried it, it definitely made things much worse. This is because I cope with my fear-of-flying through concentration, and being buzzed made it impossible to concentrate.

Myth 4: anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax can cure fear-of-flying.

Maybe if you take enough of it to knock you out. I take a small dose of Xanax every time I fly; it doesn't stop the anxiety at all, or even relieve it much. What it does do is to enable me to calm down as soon as we hit smooth air after turbulence. This prevents me from arriving at my destination either a. stoned or b. as useless as a limp noodle from having suffered a 3-hour-long unremitting panic attack.

Myth 5: anti-anxiety drugs are the only thing that can help fear-of-flying.

Not so. Actually my main approach to dealing with fear-of-flying is through something akin to meditating. I don't mean that I say 'om', either in my head or out loud, the whole time I'm flying; but I have mental tricks I apply when I fly.

I have found that even in turbulent rides, crews have gotten much better about trying to find patches of smooth air to ride in for a while. It's critical to calm down as fast as possible after a turbulent stretch, to conserve energy.

The Xanax helps with this, but another thing I do is to remind myself that being on a turbulent ride is like being in labor. When the plane is really rocking, and I am really terrified, I'll tell myself that I'll get a short break soon, that it won't last forever, and that all I have to do is hold on for as long as this patch of turbulence lasts, and then relax completely until the next one. This is the same way you get through a long and difficult labor.

Another trick I apply is to remind myself that being in rough air is like being in a boat in rough water (an idea which doesn't frighten me). Generally the motion of the plane is similar to that of the boat, and I close my eyes and envision that I am in fact in a boat riding waves. This works better if the plane is bobbing up and down than if it's being battered in all directions.

In rough air, I keep my eyes closed. I do this because I hate to see the fuselage flex in turbulence; I find that very disturbing. I also don't want to see fear in the faces of anyone else around me (the calm voices and presence of the crew help a great deal). Mentally shutting out my surroundings and my seatmates is much preferable to what I used to do, which was to grab my neighbor's arm in turbulence and perhaps even piteously ask if I could hold his hand. While I made friends this way, it was a tad humiliating, and I'm not as cute as I used to be, either.

Possibly Myth 6: most people with fear of flying just quit flying.

This is all too often true. I know of people who drive from California to the East Coast every year in order to attend family reunions, because they can't face the flight; it means they have take two weeks of vacation time for a one-week visit. I have friends I haven't seen in years, and may never see again, because they won't fly. I know of people who have made career sacrifices and lost opportunities because they won't fly. I didn't want the phobia to have that big an impact on my life, and I was also afraid that if I quit flying, the phobia would migrate, and I'd become unable to drive or to leave the house. So whatever it is that makes me phobic, I keep it confined to being phobic about airplanes.

There were a couple of years there where I didn't fly. I almost missed a family wedding over it, but went anyway because I had my arm twisted to go, and didn't want to drive (I dread flying, but I still like the way it gets you there faster than anything else).

Then I started traveling again for work. I've flown with my workmates for years, and many were kind enough to hold my hand in turbulence in the bad old days. I had one workmate tell me he admired the way I could become a total unashamed wreck on a flight, then walk off the flight and go do business as usual.

At this time, I fly pretty frequently for work and for family vacations. I'm starting to think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I still want to see the big cities of Europe.

comments...


MetacognitiveTeaching 14 Dec 2005 - 05:10 CarolynJohnston

I had an interesting email this evening from a Jenny D (I don't know whether it was Jenny D the blogger):

One of the reasons that reform math gets a bad rap is that many programs stop at the hard part.

Let me try a different way. Traditional math is good because it has one way to solve a problem. But higher math never has one way to solve a problem. So what teachers need is a better framework for teaching math that allows for different ways to solve problems.

But that means the teaching is harder than simply marking a problem incorrect and showing the one way to solve. It means thinking more deeply about student problem solving skills and actually diagnosing the slipup in computation or set up of a complex problem.

Deborah Ball did an NPR program about this last year. Here's the website. On the left is a math problem and three students' answers who got it wrong. But each got it wrong for a different reason. The understanding of what went wrong in each case and the subsequent student understanding is the best of reform math. Sadly, it rarely happens in classrooms.

One of the reasons traditional math is so beloved is because it's easy to teach.

Love your site. Good luck.

This brings to mind some discussions that Catherine and I have had regarding 'Metacognitive teaching', which is a fancy term for anticipating the misconceptions and errors your students will make.

Jenny D is suggesting that that's a feature of 'reform' math, whereas 'traditional' math teach emphasizes learning and applying correct procedure.

I would suggest instead that it's a feature of good teaching in every approach. As Liping Ma has shown, underprepared teachers make many of the same errors themselves that the kids make.

But I agree that one reason traditional math is beloved is because it's easy to teach. And I think that's a good thing, although it doesn't make up for a weak teacher.



comments...


RoundOne 14 Dec 2005 - 15:53 CatherineJohnson



ding, ding, ding

We're off to our meeting with the principal.


I predict:

  • no to changing Christopher's English class

  • no to changing the grades on his photo essay and feature story/persuasive essay/major research product

  • suggested move from Phase 4 math to Phase 2/3

  • minimizing of Grade Contract; "it's just an exercise," "it doesn't mean anything," "I don't know where you got the idea that we blame the kids" etc. This will be a concession.



what I'm wearing

  • tight jeans from Paris

  • see-through crinkle mock turtleneck from Weathervane

  • Armani blazer, collar turned up

  • discreet Judith Jack lapel pin; Christmas theme

  • Italian boots


I wonder if Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers is still in print?



next stop: Pupil Personnel



the good news

Christopher is out of the line of fire.

Yesterday Mrs. Roth screamed 'Shut up' at one of her perceived favorites.

She says nothing to Christopher that could be remotely interpreted as negative, hostile, teasing, or bullying.

That's the way it is with bullies.

If they're not slamming your kid, they're slamming someone else's.




comments...


HappyEndingMostLikely 14 Dec 2005 - 18:44 CatherineJohnson


The meeting with the principal went great.

Great, great, great.

All my predictions were wrong; I have no ability to judge social situations or Other People's Intentions; in the future I will limit my contributions to Kitchen Table Math to comic relief.

Our school is great, Irvington is great, our property taxes are great and I'd like to pay more next year!

OK, I don't mean that last part. But we're thrilled.


blueline.jpg



Just in case you're experiencing Emotional Whiplash, I'm going to quote something Carolyn said a couple of weeks ago.

She was up in arms about a situation, and naturally I was egging her on (Scots-Irish alert).

So then a few days later we were talking, and I asked her how the situation was going.

She said, 'Oh, we had lunch & it was fine. I can't hold a grudge.'

I can hold a grudge if I decide to.

But it doesn't come naturally.


blueline.jpg



so what happened?

It was interesting.

First of all—and this is why we're so happy—we have a much better impression of the principal.

We didn't know him at all going in, and so far he doesn't 'show' terribly well in large public gatherings.....and we weren't able to interpret what this meant. The Middle School is difficult for us to read, partly because we're new there, and partly because the people are so young. The principal is very young; many of the teachers are super-young.

This is an important part of the reason why the math class has been tough for me to cess out and deal with. I don't want to hammer young people who are at the beginning of their careers and are obviously trying.

Plus I don't want to tell people how to do their jobs.....

And then (psychoanalysis alert) there's the issue of Mama Bear Emotion, which trips me up.

I'm ferocious about my young, as all parents are.

My own mother, who may be the single most naturally cheerful person on earth, told me a story once.

"I used to think I could never harm anyone," she said.

"But when you were born, and I was holding you in my arms, I looked down at you and I knew I could kill anyone who tried to hurt you."

That's a strong story coming from anyone, but if you knew my mom, you'd be sitting there thinking, right now, 'What can I do to not tick this woman off?'

I feel exactly the same way about my own children, and those emotions get triggered when I see Christopher sinking in math & crying over homework.

These emotions get in my way, because it's obvious no one in the math department is remotely trying to make my child cry over his homework. Quite the opposite.

I may be sounding like a nut right about now, but I'll just go ahead and sound like a nut, because I think parents often feel like nuts when they're dealing with the schools.

So my Mama-Bear emotions will get triggered, I'll perceive at once that there's no mountain lion trying to eat my cub, and then I'll try to figure out which emotional register I should be in, if any, and after a few days of this have passed I can end up just deciding to stifle myself.



Math

So back to the principal. He's great.

We had zero talk about moving Christopher down to Phase 2. Zero. There was NONE of that.

We showed him the latest test, with a grade of D, and the principal, who strongly supports his staff and clearly likes Ms. Kahl, expressed surprise that she hadn't been in touch. Ed said all the obvious things. He said that when you have a child who's started the year with a B, moved to a C, and is now finishing out the semester with a D, you've got a problem that needs immediate attention.

The principal completely agreed, and said he was surprised and sorry to hear that hadn't happened.

He asked us to talk to Ms. Kahl, and possibly to the Math Chair as well—which is good.

He also has complete awareness that it's not OK in math (or any other subject, but especially not math) to take your 'C' or your 'D' and move on. He said, 'Math is foundational' and he knew what he was talking about. This wasn't remotely a novel concept to him.

Unforunately, I don't think the math situation can be fixed this year. They're going to have to spend some time seriously thinking about how to do this course.

And I suspect the plan is simply to dump the course altogether. "I'm not a fan of tracking," the principal said. They all feel this way, universally.

There's the crux of the larger issue; that's where the paradigm shift needs to happen.

That's fine; we can push for a paradigm shift and we will. When it comes to Christopher, they'll jump in, work to make sure he's getting the concepts, & work with Ed & me.

One last thing. I took in the write-up of Carol Gambill's class, and I would say that the principal was actively interested in it, and wanted the math teachers to see it as well.

That's good.



whose job is it?

Ed opened the meeting by saying that we are having a problem with the school's philosophy, which is to place full responsibility on the child for learning and succeeding—and to use assessment as punishment, instead of information.

I gave him a copy of the Grade Contract, along with the DI contract and the Smartest Tractor contract.

I was wrong about this prediction; I thought he'd essentially disavow the Grade Contract.

But he didn't.

He felt I hadn't been nice to the Study Skills teacher, and it wasn't good for Christopher to be telling the Study Skills teacher that his mom wouldn't sign the contract, etc.

We worked through that one OK. He told me that I had taken her by surprise, that I had been angry (true), and that the Study Skills teacher felt I had been blaming her for.....something. I didn't follow that part of it. Of course, I had been blaming her; I had been blaming her for not teaching him any study skills and then making him sign a contract promising to improve his study skills.

I said it's not appropriate for a teacher to hang up on a parent regardless of whether the parent is angry. He agreed, and said he'd told the teacher as much. (That was clear from the email she'd sent later that day.)

This part of the meeting was fine, because Ed and I don't particularly have a beef with the study skills teacher, and said so. I said, too, that the study skills teacher had walked into an Already Existing bad situation, which was obvious to all. We were already upset about the math class; then two Ds & the public humilliation of our child & the subsequent taunting at school and crying at night hit; and at that precise moment the study skills teacher picked up the phone to call me on the carpet about the Grade Contract.

It was obvious that's what had happened, and we moved on. The principal would like me to make a conciliatory gesture towards the teacher, and I probably will.



quality going up, I think

Here's another great thing: the principal cleary thinks the Study Skills course is pointless.

As I say, he's strongly supportive of his staff.

But he clearly believes that study skills should be taught in the context of academic content, not abstracted out as Study Skills. He also thinks Study Hall is for the birds, and explained why.

This was terrific, too, because we could agree on what had occurred. Basically, Ed and I see Study Skills as a wash, and we weren't squawking about it, because we don't spend huge amounts of time squawking. We wouldn't have started squawking if we hadn't gotten 3 Ds home in one week along with a Contract to Improve My Grades from Study Skills.

This is his second year as principal; the Study Skills class was in place long before he got here.

It's probably going to be phased out. (In fact, I think he may actually have said, 'Would you rather have your child in Study Skills or in an extra hour of math?'—nirvana.)

hmm

The comparison may have been to Study Hall versus Extra Hour Of Math.

In any case, he raised the question of wasted time during the school day.

Good.



Ken's DI contract & Smartest Tractor's self-assessment contract

These documents were tremendously helpful.

thank you, Ken & Smartest Tractor

The principal looked closely at both (as closely as he could in a meeting), and saw exactly what we were talking about.

He wanted to give me an argument, and he did give me an argument. The student needs to take responsibility.

But I said, "I don't think a clinical psychologist would tell you this is a good thing to do to a child. You're forcing him to check off Bad Things About Me, and you're forcing him to assume a vague, general responsibility for something wrong that he did and doesn't even understand.

Most of the conversation was highly constructive and collaborative; this part was a clear 'win' for us. He wanted to argue the case, and he stopped because he didn't have a case. Christopher received two Ds on two papers with no feedback as to what's so terrible about his work; in the same week he has to sign a Contract saying he'll bring those Ds up to As by doing......what?

What could he do to earn an A from Mrs. Roth?

He doesn't know, and neither do we.

Ken will like this part.

Offhand, the principal didn't really like the Direct Instruction contract so much.

He liked the Smartest Tractor contract.

Serious direct instruction is a tough sell.

In this context, it didn't matter.

The point was made.



is the school harsh?

As I say, Ed opened by taking issue with the overriding philosophy of the school as we see it.

The principal said—and this was astounding—"Do you see the school as harsh?"

Ed said, "Yes."

He took it in.

He took it in, because it's obvious he does not want to be heading a school with a harsh culture. That isn't the plan, at all.

If he has parents telling him "Your school is so harsh that our son is being emotionally harmed" that's a problem.



Mrs. Roth

I will be shocked if, tomorrow, we don't hear that Christopher is changing classes.

Ed's not as sure.

The school's policy is No changing classes.

Interestingly, the principal doesn't seem to have been hearing lots of complaints about Mrs. Roth. If he has, he gave no hint of it, which is probably good.

He was clearly 'taking in information'; he was in debriefing mode.

I told him that if he hadn't heard from other parents yet, he was going to be hearing; that registered.

I told him, too, that my sense of the situation is that Mrs. Roth's caustic sense of humor bounces off the rough-and-tumble boys, but upsets the girls and sensitive boys like Christopher.

He heard that, too. (I'll add that I asked a teacher I know about Mrs. Roth's reputation this week. Her reputation is, "Not a lot of warmth." The principal can't possibly not know that.)

Ed says the principal will want to run this by his vice principal; he thinks she'll object to moving a child on principle, which could be an obstacle.

So we'll see.

(Given that none of my earlier predictions was remotely on the money, I don't know why I'm even bothering to make one.)



the unbearable brilliance of Ed

He is a master at these things.

I'm serious.

It's like being in the presence of genius.

Actually, it's not like being in the presence of genius; it's the real thing. (Jeez. Genius at dealing with school administrators......you don't usually hear about that category.)

The principal wanted to argue the Mrs. Roth situation with us.

First off, he wanted to critique the email Ed wrote. He said it was 'over the top.'

We said the email accurately describes our position.

The principal pulled up the email on his computer, and read the first line, which was:

Dear Ms. Roth,

My wife and I have serious concerns about the writing curriculum in your class and about your grading methods and lack of constructive assessment of our son's work.  Catherine and I know something about writing, having published six books between us, with two more in the works.  (Catherine's most recent book, Animals in Translation, was a NY Times bestseller.) 

The principal thought this was outrageous, though he put it more diplomatically.

He said, 'Six books between us—that's telling her she doesn't know anything about teaching writing.'

We said, 'She doesn't know anything about teaching writing.'

He said, 'This email was written in anger.'

Ed said, 'We are angry.'

I said, 'We are going to stay angry.'

We went on like this for awhile. Ed was in full command of his tone; I was a tad......not in control of my tone.

sigh

(Although, a line like 'We are going to stay angry' is effective whether you're in control of your tone or not.)

The principal gave it one last shot at some point, saying, 'This email sounds as if you wrote it to hurt Mrs. Roth.'

We said, 'We wrote it to hurt Mrs. Roth.'

(These are almost verbatim quotes.)

At some point, it became clear to the principal that we weren't going to be reasonable.

I'd say he did a good job absorbing this information, which was obviously not what he expected.

He made another stab at saying we should have talked to the teacher first; we should meet with her; etc.....

We said there was no reason for us to meet with or speak to this teacher under any circumstances.

At some point he saw that reality clearly, and said, 'So there's no reason to have you sit down at a table with Mrs. Roth.'

Here's where Ed is so amazing, and where I would have folded.

The principal wanted to shift things to emotion. We are angry because our child is upset.

This is true. We are angry because our child upset.

This wasn't a 'dishonest' strategy on the principal's part; it was the way he understood things. He didn't know about the 'You're not retarded' comment, and was visibly upset when he heard it. He didn't know that Christopher has been teased and taunted on a daily basis since Mrs. Roth handed him his public Ds and said 'Are you doing the work at all?' in front of the entire class.

sidebar: Rudbeckia's FERPA link was also helpful.

Mrs. Roth announces grades every day. It's constant. I can cite half the grades of half the kids in that class from memory, and Christopher could tell you all of them.

This was a killer, because the principal several times told us that since we hadn't been present in the class, we couldn't know what was really happening there.

The fact that I can recite the other students' grades instantly neutralizes that argument. I shouldn't be able to recite the other students' grades.

I said that this was a possible FERPA problem. He said it didn't violate FERPA, but it was certainly unprofessional and shouldn't be happening. I said that if it didn't violate FERPA, it was getting close.

This was all to the good. I don't want to make a FERPA case, hire lawyers, etc.

What I needed was simply to know about FERPA, so I could raise the issue.

I'll say that I didn't necessarily have to raise FERPA, since the principal was taking the situation seriously.

Still, what he wanted to do was tell us we'd written an over-the-top email in anger, and ask us to sit down with Mrs. Roth and work things out now that we'd had some time to cool off.

Raising FERPA helped impress upon him the point that we weren't going to be meeting with Mrs. Roth under any circumstances, and we weren't going to be cooling off.

Rudbeckia, thank you



I know. This is long. But I figure.....this is My Personal Record of Events, so....it's long. (Sorry.)


staying on message

Back to Ed.

Once the principal heard the 'You're not retarded' line, things changed. He was visibly distressed to hear that a student in his school was being teased and taunted at lunchtime because of something a teacher had done. That was geniune

It also allowed him to move things to the emotional register, where he felt more comfortable.

I've mentioned several times that in the Middle School there is a chronic your-kids-aren't-as-smart-as-you-think culture, which the people there may not even be aware of.

Our position on Christopher's paper is that it deserves a grade of A.

Mrs. Roth's position is that it deserves a D.

The principal wanted to maneuver us to the point of agreeing that it was a bad paper—or, failing that, simply to drop the issue of the grade altogether, and 'admit' that the 'real' problem was the 'You're not retarded' remark.

I would have gone for that. (Sorry.)

Ed was like a dog with a bone.

He just kept coming back to the grade.

He said, "I would never give a student a grade of D on a paper he wrote and handed in. A grade of D is a failing grade. If I had to give a grade of D, I would provide a full page of constructive feedback explaining why the paper fails the assignment, and I would discuss the paper in private with the student, not in front of the class."

Then he hammered away at the idea that this wasn't a 'D' paper in any case.

Once Ed led the way, I was OK here, too.

I pointed out, a couple of times, that I write feature stories for a living.

Mrs. Roth's biggest beef is that Christopher's paper is short ("awfully short for a major research product" is the way she put it).

I pointed out that a 'feature story' isn't the same thing as a 'persuasive essay' which isn't the same thing as a 'major research product.' [update: A mom told me tonight that one of the girls in the class raised her hand and asked if the feature story and the persuasive essay were the same assignment. Mrs. Roth said, "That's a stupid question."]

Mrs. Roth gave all three labels to the kids when she made the assignment.

I pointed out that, in writing a feature story, the writer constantly has to cut. Constantly.

You have to learn to write short.

(That's the problem with this post; it's too long. Too short is never an issue for a professional.)

This was our only moment of Fractured Logic. The principal said, 'But these are 6th grade kids, we can't compare them to professionals.'

It was apples and oranges again!

A professional has to write short & sweet; a 6th grader should write long & boring, because he's a sixth grader.

If he writes short and sweet, HE FLUNKS!

We went back and forth on this.

The principal said he'd shown the paper to other members of the English department, and they agreed it was bad.

Ed said, 'Did you show it to them with the grade on it?'

The principal said, 'OK, I'll take the grade and the comments off and I won't tell anyone who wrote it or who the teacher is.'

We weren't interested. The paper is good, we said; it deserves an A.

Ultimately, we abandoned this question. It was clear we weren't going to budge; nor would we countenance a Floating, School-wide Assessment Scheme.

At some point the principal as much as said, 'This paper isn't a D.' He didn't say it was an 'A'; he doesn't think it's an A.

What he probably thinks is that it's a 'C,' but that a reasonable teacher, operating under the same grade inflation every other student is given the benefit of, would have given it a B.

I told him—this was my role—that Christopher had worked hard on his paper. That's true. He worked hard on it, and he was proud of what he'd written.

I said, 'This is his work. He tried hard to write a good paper for Mrs. Roth. He's been crying for two weeks.'

Hearing this, the principal looked pained. It was obvious that he perceived the 'D' as a terrible thing to do to a brand-new middle-schooler.

Suppose his paper really was a D?

Suppose it really was awful?

A child who really couldn't write well would never have been treated so harshly.



almost done.....(must pick Christopher up)




the high point

I think the best part of the meeting had to do with Ed's over the top email.

The principal's central goal was to get us to climb down.

We weren't having it, but he kept trying different tacks.

Finally he said to Ed, 'How would you feel if you got an email like that from a parent?'

Ed said, 'I wouldn't get an email like that.'

I almost fell out of my own chair.

The principal looked like he was experiencing the same loss of balance, but—and I admire this—he recovered fast enough to persist.

That was something else I liked. He was thinking on his feet. We weren't doing what he thought we'd do, and we were throwing him curves. He had no idea there was a You're not retarded problem.

He has chops. He was outgunned, seeing as how Ed has a good 20 years on him. But he was game. I like that.

So he tried again. He said, 'What would you do if you got an email like that?'

Ed said, 'I would never get an email like that.'

The principal took the point.

That was a great moment for me. It was another moment where I saw clearly why other people are administrators & I'm not.

Being a good administrator means taking responsibility for things I wouldn't want to take responsibility for, and probably couldn't take responsibility for.

Being a good administrator it means taking responsibility for not getting enraged emails from parents.

It means running a school so smoothly and so competently that things don't reach that point. The staff is doing what they're supposed to do, and the parents trust you to the point that when the are furious, their first move is to pick up the phone and talk.

Not send an email bomb.


'it's on the table'

I can't remember how we finally came to the end of the conversation.

Basically, after we'd gone through the Mrs.-Roth-inspired taunting and teasing Christopher was going through, the nightly crying, the 'I'm stupid, I don't want to go to school,' the 'Stop banging around and making all that noise, you're not retarded.....' all of that.....the principal said something exactly right.

He said, 'Alright. I have to talk to Mrs. Roth. I can't make this decision without hearing her out.'

His tone was direct and simple; this was administrator-to-administrator.

Then he said, without pausing, 'Ordinarily we don't allow students to switch classes, but I can see that's on the table. I'll talk to her today, and I'll call you tomorrow.'

To me, that was amazing.

I was radically not expecting to hear this. I was expecting to get the run-around; I was expecting to go to Pupil Personnel; I was expecting to bring in an Advocate (and in fact had already talked to the Advocate who helped us with Jimmy).

It was a good moment, and it was exactly what he should have said.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.



how to write

So I'm a fan of the principal's, and, barring something unhappy-making tomorrow, I'll remain a fan.

But there were two problems, one of which I understand fairly well, the other of which everyone is already talking about in the Comments thread, concerning gifted kids, and which I don't understand well.

The problem that's making sense to me is the writing problem we have in Irvington schools.

The principal thought Christopher's paper was bad.

Mrs. Roth thought it was awful.

That's a problem, because not only was it not awful, it was good for his age and for what he understood the assignment to be.

Here's an example.

The assignment said that a persuasive essay should Begin with a grabber or hook to get the reader's attention.

Christopher's opening line was: School should be a safe place, right?

One line.

The body of the paper began in the next paragraph.

That's good writing. Number one, it's a 'grabber.' It pulls the reader—especially a kid reader—the 'right' at the end of the sentence makes the essay interactive; it almost commands the reader to start thinking.

The brevity makes it work.

The principal pulled out Christopher's essay and said, 'To be honest with you, I don't like this first sentence. It's not grammatical.'

I didn't remember the first sentence, and I was thinking Christopher had reversed the words 'school' and 'should.'

But he hadn't. The sentence is not only grammatically correct as it stands; it fulfills the assignment. It's a hook.

So......we're in trouble on the Writing Instruction front. Which we already knew. (hey. was that a sentence fragment? i think it was!)

I already know this is a school-wide problem, because it's been happening to the son of a friend of mine. Writing is his particular talent, and he writes well. 'Writes well' means he doesn't write like a 16 year old producing a 5-paragraph essay for the SAT. He's getting clobbered. My friend has been terribly upset about this, because she doesn't have the confidence to know that the teacher is wrong and she's right.

One time she sat in her car and cried after a teacher told her how bad her son's writing was. (I've read his writing. He's good. Trust me.)

The lesson here is simple, of course; Christopher is going to have to do boring, bad writing his teachers will perceive as good.

We can handle that.



Reader's Digest Condensed Version

Here's what an over the top email sounds like:

I've been a teacher and educator for 25 years, and one of the things I learned early on was that you must always highlight the positive aspects of a student's work, even if you have to look hard to find a narrow ray of light.  According to you, there's not even scintilla of quality in Chris's recent piece.  

We beg to differ.  Take the opening sentence: "School should be a safe place, right?"  This seems an excellent way to start.  With just these few words, Chris has nicely set up this essay.  He establishes the reader's expectations, suggesting that the reality of schools may leave those expectations unfulfilled.   Chris goes on to say that there have been shootings in certain schools and then to explain why those shootings might have occurred (bullying, parental abuse, violent video games).  Next, he suggests how the shootings might be stopped and then tersely sums up what he's said.  All this in 175 words!  Not bad for a novice writer with no real instruction under his belt.

The paper deserves an A; your having given it a D would be laughable, except that you have made Chris cry.  You should know, by the way, that Chris wrote this paper entirely on his own; we gave him not an ounce of help.  We're well aware that other parents are writing their kids' papers, but if Chris is to learn to write, he needs to do it himself.  


That's about as obnoxious as it gets.

Scratch that.

What I meant to say is, That's about as obnoxious as it gets, right?



how to write, part 2

The other Writing Instruction issue is that the principal didn't recognize the rhetorical strategy in Ed's email.

That strategy was simple. Write an email so over the top that the only possible option would be to remove Christopher from the class, because if he stayed there would be no way to guarantee his emotional safety.

The point was, specifically, to prevent the school from 'opening a dialogue,' 'meeting with Mrs. Roth to discuss Christopher's work,' etc., etc.

I don't know that a person reading the email for the first time should see this, necessarily. But I do think that the principal should have picked this up quickly from the meeting—and should have recognized that, regardless of how he felt about the email, it had achieved its purpose.

How many angry emails from a parent unhappy about his kid's grade on a Feature Story get you as far as we got in the space of one meeting?

None.

boy

We're going to be doing a whole lot of Genre Writing around here for the next 3 years. Put on your SAT Face and go go go!


Department of Irony

On the way home, Ed said, 'The point of the email was to declare war.'

Then he said, 'It was firing on Fort Sumter.'

We drove along for awhile, and finally he said, 'It was preemptive war.'

You can probably all guess just how big a fan Ed was of preemptive war back when George Bush came up with the idea.



Rothcommentspaper.jpg


This is it.

This is the sum total of the instruction and feedback Christopher received on his papers.

That and Are you actually trying to do the work? asked in front of the class.

One last thing: Christopher says he turned in a 'work cited page.'

We have no idea what's going on in that class.




comments...


TodaysQuiz 15 Dec 2005 - 02:45 CatherineJohnson



what a day

you don't get too many like this one

the meeting went great, we love our principal, AND.....Christopher came home with 22 out of 24 points on his quiz, thanks to our new timed-practice mode (presumably).

he needed that

Plus the math teacher has begun to collect homework, which she hadn't been doing, AND she's having the kids do guided practice, which she also wasn't doing (at least, she wasn't doing very much as far as we could tell)

things are looking up

I just wish I had some Pillsbury chocolate chip cookie dough to celebrate with




comments...


NewsFromSingapore 15 Dec 2005 - 03:37 CarolynJohnston

Remember that article by Steven Leinwand about what Singapore could learn from the U.S.? And how we were joking about how all they could learn is how to be 16th in the international ranking on the TIMSS?

Well, apparently they've fallen for it. Here's the news from Singapore:

When school re-opens in January, it won't just be a new year that students are welcoming -- 'A' Level students will also be facing a whole new junior college curriculum.

This would include new elements like Geography field trips, learning Chinese with "wuxia", or swordfighting, novels, and learning Mathematics with graphic calculators.

Even teachers are working hard over the holidays learning how to teach this new syllabus.

Fans of Louis Cha's wuxia novels can now claim to be doing homework. These books have been added to the 'A' Level reading list for Chinese students.

The Education Ministry says the move is to keep up with what students are interested in.

(Do you suppose Leinwand is actually a covert agent for the U.S.?)

In Mathematics, Further Maths and the component of Mechanics will no longer be offered from 2006.

What is new is the use of graphic calculators, something even maths teachers are learning how to use.

MOE says the new 'A' Level curriculum offers students more breadth and options.

Students will be able to draw on insights from different fields, to think on their feet -- all to better prepare them for the demands of the innovation-driven world of the 21st century.

Unbelievable. We've won by stealth, by exporting our bad ideas, by uploading a virus to the aliens' mother ship. They were winning -- they had us beaten -- and then... we assimilated them.



comments...


MrsRothInstructionAndGrading 15 Dec 2005 - 12:47 CatherineJohnson


Sorry, I know this is repetitive.

I've decided to capture the 'Feature Story' instructions & feedback inside one post, so they show up together in the category thread, and so I can pull a few thoughts together about how to teach writing.



The kids were told they were to write a feature story.

Then they were given 2 handouts in class.



here's one:


persuasiveoutline.jpg


here's the other:


Rothpersuasivetips.jpg


And that was it. The kids went off, wrote a Feature Story/Persuasive Essay/Major Research Product, and turned it in. Then they were given a grade.


feedback and grade:

Rothcommentspaper.jpg


The papers were handed out so that all students saw each others' grades, and Christopher was called to Mrs. Roth's desk to be shamed. "Are you actually trying to do the work?" Mrs. Roth said, with all the class listening.

Notice there are two Ds here; he was first learning he'd flunked two writing assignments at that moment. He is the only child in any of Mrs. Roth's classes to receive a grade of D on both papers, or—I'll wager—on any paper.

Since that day Christopher has been teased and taunted at lunch and recess every day. At night he comes home and cries.

Two days ago one of his closest friends said to him, "Mrs. Roth is a good teacher, you're just stupid."

He's no longer sitting with his friends at lunch, and has joined the table of two students who are struggling academically. One of them is the sole black child in his English class, to whom Mrs. Roth said, recently, "Stop acting stupid." The other is a boy whose parents have had a bitter divorce, and who has been sent for Homework Help.

I like these boys; I'm happy for Christopher to be their friend.

I'm not happy that this new friendship has been caused by a public humiliation of my child. (If I were the parent of either of those boys—and I knew what was happening—I wouldn't be happy, either.)



One more thing.

For the record, Christopher says he turned in a 'work cited page.'

I have no idea what happened to the work cited page. If he says he did it, then he did. It could be buried in his folder, his locker, his notebook.....lord only knows where it is. For all I know, Mrs. Roth could have lost it herself.

If she were concerned with his learning, she'd find out.



how not to teach writing

  • what is the assignment? In class, the children were told to write a "Feature Story." At some point it became apparent to some of the children, though not to Christopher, that they were to write a "Persuasive Essay." Another mom told me that one girl raised her hand and asked, "Is the Feature Story the same thing as the Persuasive Essay?" She thought maybe they were two different assignments. Mrs. Roth said, "That's a stupid question."* Apparently "Major Research Product" was also part of the assignment, judging by the feedback Christopher received to justify his grade of D. This is an appalling assignment. If you can't clearly define a writing assignment—if you don't know that Feature Stories, Persuasive Essays, and Major Research Products are 3 different things—you've violated the fundamental tenet of good writing going in. Clear thinking and clear expression start at the top.

  • reliance on the parent to function as secretary and reserve teacher I failed miserably in my assigned role. Give me a D. No, give me an F. I failed to go through Christopher's stuffed-to-the-gills folder, pull out the assignment sheets, read them myself, then take out my calendar and pencil in an additional nightly battle over writing to accompany my previously scheduled nightly battle over math. Here's how the Feature Story battle would have gone. Christopher would have insisted the assignment was a Feature Story. Brandishing Mrs. Roth's 'tips,' I would have insisted the assignment was also a Persuasive Essay. Christopher would have had some comeback or other, then he would have started yelling, and I would have threatened to Email The Teacher and Find Out What The Assignment Really Is and so on and so on......I did none of this. I let him go off and do the assignment on his own; when he finished I read through & thought it was good. That wasn't my job. My job was to function as Reserve Teacher and Secretary, to manage, revise, and edit Christopher's work, to type it up with headings, subheadings, Word Art and illustrations, & to carry Mrs. Roth through the school year just as I am carrying Christopher's math teacher through the school year. I blew it. (See Susan on being your child's secretary.)

  • failure to grasp the nature of a 6th grade child Christopher is intensely focused on school. That's always been true, but now he's becoming independent, and he wants me to butt out. He thinks he knows what the teacher said; he doesn't want to hear what I think the teacher said. And he's horrifically anxious about his 9-POCKET SCHOOL FOLDER. He won't let us take any papers out of it because he might need them, so he has no idea what's in there or where it is. His school folder is exactly like George's wallet in the Seinfeld episode about overstuffed wallets, only bigger & he gets graded on doing assignments that are lost inside.

  • no apparent instruction According to Christopher, this is the only instruction they got. Two hand-outs, then a grade. I believe him, since other moms of other kids in the class say the same thing. However, even if Mrs. Roth spent every day of the past month teaching the kids how to write a Feature Story/Persuasive Essay/Major Research Product, Christopher didn't learn what she taught, or he wouldn't have gotten 2 Ds on 2 consecutive papers. A grade of D on a completed student paper is a grade of D on the teacher's teaching. Mrs. Roth has done no formative assessment to discover whether her students have taken in what she's been teaching. Nor has she done formative assessment to discover whether the students remember they were given two handouts, know where those handouts are and can locate them, or understand what the 'tips' on the handouts actually mean.

  • no teaching of process I have mixed feelings about teaching writing-as-process. This has been the dominant approach for decades now, and Ed says he's seen student writing improve dramatically over the past 20 years in form, but not content. I'm not sure why writing-as-process sets off my bad-curriculum sensors; I'll have to figure it out. However, in this case there should have been some kind of teaching-of-process somewhere. This is a pure product approach, with no instruction at all, and no intermediate stages or steps. If this teacher wanted a Major Research Product—an assignment beyond the capacities and knowledge of these 6th grade children—she needed to be taking them through the stages. She didn't.

  • starting at the top The persuasive essay is the calculus of writing. College kids can't do it; first-year Masters candidates can't do it. Moreover, most college kids and entry-level Masters candidates can't identify the argument implicit in nonfiction texts; most college kids and entry-level Masters candidates have no idea there is an argument implicit in nonfiction texts. This is why I'm interested in the Everything's An Argument text.



0312407246.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg



I'm thinking about how to teach writing, and remembering how I did teach writing at Iowa, Cal State Long Beach, UC Irvine (where I taught science writing), and Johns Hopkins CTY.

This isn't it.


blueline.jpg

* That's a stupid answer.




comments...


ResistanceIsFutile 15 Dec 2005 - 14:47 CatherineJohnson



Picardassimilation.jpg





comments...

LogicalFallacyBingoPart2 15 Dec 2005 - 17:17 CatherineJohnson




FallacyBingoInformal.gif



logic sites

Doug also left links to 2 logic sites:

Nizkor project: logical fallacies

Atheism Web: Logic & Fallacies (ooo, that's Christmasy!)

I used Howard Kahane's Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life to teach freshman rhetoric at Iowa.

The book seems to have expanded by a couple hundred pages since I used it, and the price has gone through the roof.

But I'll bet it's still a terrific book.


Logical Fallacy Bingo




comments...


SteveOnWriting 15 Dec 2005 - 17:35 CatherineJohnson


from the helicopter parents Comments thread:

Susan: Writing-wise, developmentally inappropriate to me is when they ask for middle school cognitive skills in grade school, like the ability to extract a main point from a paragraph, or the ability to develop a thesis through an essay before they even know what a sentence is.

Steve: I have noticed that writing skills greatly lag reading skills, as one would expect. When a book report is given, it is for a book at their reading level: 75-150 page chapter books (although he has read all of the Harry Potter books). He is given a two/three page form to follow for writing the report with maybe a page allowed for writing a description of the book.

Even I would have to work at reducing a description of the book down to one or two pages. The times I have worked with my son on these projects (he could never do them himself), it has been a struggle.

In class, they talk a lot about editing (they call it SCOPE) and correcting a rough draft, but not much time on the more difficult task of coming up with the first draft and have it close enough to even begin the SCOPE process. I tell him that it is like reducing a Harry Potter book down to movie length, since we have spent a long time talking about what is in the book versus what is in the movie. He can see that the more you have to reduce, the more difficult it becomes.



Re-reading this, I think Steve has put his finger on what's been bothering me about the Writing As Process juggernaut (which apparently got underway in San Francisco in the....1970s? Ed knows. It was something called the San Francisco Writing Project, or some such). It's been hugely influential.

At Iowa, we didn't teach writing as 'process.'

We used the Norton Anthology and Kahane's book on logic if we chose (I did choose) and the kids turned in one 500-word paper a week. Then we discussed as many of them in class as we could.

We read nonfiction essays in Norton and analyzed the argument, support, structure, and style.

We also had a coherent sequence of assignments, starting with the personal narrative, and working up to the persuasive essay.

This is a terrific way to organize a comp course, because the structure of a personal narrative is 'natural' to most people (though not all). It's organized along a timeline.

Moreoever, even the greenest students could instantly tell which personal narrative worked best, and invariably the best narrative was the narrative with the most detail. Everyone saw this.

Typically, what would happen is that most of the essays would be awful—boring as heck—but one kid would be a natural-born user-of-detail and everyone else would see this.

Because 'detail' is to a personal narrative what 'evidence' is to an expository essay, we had a natural jumping off point.

I'll add that we didn't purposely send them out to write boring personal narratives for the sake of making a point. Before they wrote a personal narrative they read examples of personal narratives in Norton, and we pointed out that the narratives worked, in large part, because of vivid detail.

But they were young, new writers, so just reading a couple of good personal narratives and being told that Detail was the Magic Ingredient wasn't enough.

The contrast between a boring personal narrative without detail and an interesting personal narrative with detail brought the point home.

I'm wondering now whether we should have had a writing-as-process 'strand' (golly I hate that word).....I'm also having trouble remembering whether, in fact, we did have such a strand!

I have a vague memory that a lot of the kids took a two-semester course in Freshman Rhetoric, and that the second course taught them to write & revise a research paper.

I guess I'm thinking, at the moment, that writing-as-process is, as Steve suggests, a later stage.


U.K. writing instruction

This passage bears repeating. I'm going to figure out how to create this exercise for Christopehr:

[Judith] Koren describes how two British women she knows became effective essayists and speakers. “Each week, they’d had homework exercises like this: While preserving every essential point, reduce a 100-word essay to 50 words, then to 20, then to 10. Reduce 500 words to 50, 1,000 words to 100. Week after week, year after year.



source:
we need info on UK writing instruction


key words: San Francisco Bay Area writing project writing as process




comments...

BeckyOnHowNotToTeachWriting 15 Dec 2005 - 18:00 CatherineJohnson


Let me just say that my 4th grader had to write a five-paragraph "persuasive essay" this weekend on why students should be allowed to return to the classroom unescorted if they forget their lunchboxes. I didn't help him with that one, except to correct his spelling. In fact, I was bursting with pride that my son figured out 3 different ways to state his 1 reason, so that he could form an essay body of 3 short paragraphs... he deserves a gold star for recognizing and attempting to execute the convention of using 3 independent supports for his argument. Even though he didn't.

But in regards to developmentally inappropriate writing assignments for 3rd graders:

The Book Talk, that comes home with these instructions, in this order:

1. Give the name of the book and the author.

2. Tell your favorite part.

3. Tell what other books this book reminds you of.

4. Show your favorite illustration from the book.

5. Tell the first sentence of the book.

6. Would you recommend this book to others?

Seem reasonable? Except there is no instruction for:

How much or how little to describe the main and supporting characters that are featured in your favorite part, so that when you read a paragraph from your favorite part, it will make sense to your classmates.

How much or how little plot information to give so that your favorite part will make sense to your classmates.

How to pick a good favorite part that you can read to your classmates and have them grasp what is funny or scary or mysterious in one paragraph.

Whether your favorite part should match the favorite illustration you pick.

Whether the best order to answer questions 1 - 6 in your book talk is 1 - 6.

And don't forget the poster for your talk!

As Steve said, it's (finding,) organizing, reducing, and localizing the information with your child that is so incredibly hard. Important, yes; easy, no. It just still takes me by surprise when I'm called upon to teach my child how to write in these situations.

But for a science fair project? It's much more pleasant to teach my son how to write in that context. That is entirely parent-driven, and it's not a surprise: I know I'm on the hook for how clearly my child presents his information. Children have not developed the ability to step outside themselves and figure out what their audience needs to know, and when they need to know it.


Yes, yes, and yes.

I find writing books incredibly hard.

But the hard part isn't the writing & revising.

The hard part is the researching and thinking.




comments...


HowToAssessKnowledgeFlexibility 15 Dec 2005 - 21:55 CatherineJohnson


Tracy just reminded me I haven't found out what showing your work would mean when comparing two numbers.

(I suspect I do know. She didn't take off points for not showing work, so I think she was probably just reminding him to compare each digit starting from the left and then underline the first digit that was different. In any case, I've sent an email asking.)

Anyway, looking at his test again, I found myself staring into the Gaping Maw of inflexible knowledge.

hoo boy

Christopher can compare two negative whole numbers.

He cannot compare two negative decimal numbers.

You have to have nerves of steel to deal with this stuff.


showwork.jpg



The principal told us to set up an apointment with the math teacher and ask her to do more formative assessment, more guided practice, etc.

I was surprised by that. To me it feels like stepping over a boundary.

But if it's not stepping over a boundary, great. I do know a fair amount about teaching math at this point; at least, I know a fair amount about practice, overlearning, and and flexible and inflexible knowledge.

I've already sent her the Carol Gambill method.

Here's my question for all of you.

Do you have any ideas about how Ed and I can assess the flexibility/inflexibility of Christopher's math knowledge?

The new timed practices we did for the quiz seemed to work great. (We'll see.)

Speed and accuracy tell you something.

I'm also writing timed practice sheets that combine separate skills. That's where all the problems seem to start.



can you lose skills?

Carolyn and I were talking about this the other night.

Another mom in town told me that TRAILBLAZERS is confusing her son so badly that he's losing the knowledge he came in with.

I feel like I'm seeing that with Christopher.

Skills he seemed pretty strong on, like comparing decimal number size, are crumbling.

The way it seems to work is that he's learned a skill pretty well; at least, he can do it quickly and accurately in isolation.

Then suddenly he has to put a gazillion different things together, and the whole edifice collapses in a heap.

That's about as specific as I can be.

I remember feeling this way myself from time to time.

There've been moments where I felt like nothing made a lick of sense.

And I know I have overlearning on basic algorithims and skills.

Every once in awhile—especially if I'm tired—I'll look at something like a percent problem and think, What is that?

That's probably a different issue.....but on the other hand, maybe not. Maybe Christopher's having brain freeze.

If you have thoughts—either about the issue of math regression or about how to assess math regression & math progression here at home, let me know.



regression in autism

I realize the idea of math regression may sound silly to most of you.

However, regression is a huge issue in autism. Huge and painful. You can have a child who's coming along pretty well suddenly lose everything, months of learning gone.

Generally speaking, the things that happen to autistic people also happen to normal people, in milder forms.

So I'm wondering whether math regression might be real.




comments...


FreeAtLast 15 Dec 2005 - 22:54 CatherineJohnson



woo hoo!!!!





Moving to Ms. Kozak for ELA.


timeline

November 1: "Stop that drumming and banging. Are you guys retarded?"

December, first week: "Are you actually trying to do the work?"

December 5, 3:30 pm: 'Feature Story' with two Ds comes home

December 5, 9:44 pm: email to Mrs. Roth, Scott Fried

December 7: meeting set with Scott Fried for Friday, December 9

December 9: snow day, meeting rescheduled for Tuesday, December 13

December 12: meeting cancelled, rescheduled for Wednesday, December 14

December 14: meeting with principal, "Normally I don't switch students' classes, but I can see it's on the table."

December 15: Thursday, done



I love my school.

I love my principal.

I am a happy human being.

The end.




comments...


ThankYouKtmContributors 16 Dec 2005 - 20:24 CatherineJohnson


I was telling Carolyn the other night how rhetorically powerful it had been to open our meeting with the principal by contrasting IMS's Grade Contract to the contracts posted by Ken and Smartest Tractor.

Those documents anchored & defined the encounter.

Carolyn said, 'Well, you've been putting a huge amount of energy into Kitchen Table Math [true], and it's coming back to you."

It sure is.

If I remember to do it, I'll start taking notes on my daily experience reading Contributors' notes. Offhand, I'd say I learn something new every day. Frequently, I find a new way of seeing something I already know, which is exactly what I need, and what I'm looking for.

By the way, I've given everyone a promotion from Commenter to Contributor. Congratulations! (ummm....Carolyn, OK with you?)

I'm guessing the answer is yes, but since I have a Rule against making Unilateral Decisions, I should say that in my own mind I've given everyone a promotion from Commenter to Contributor. I'm an expert on this kind of promtion, btw. This is the kind of promotion where you get to do even more work for the same amount of zero-money you were already pulling down to do the work you were already doing. (Have I mentioned I spent 7 years as a trustee of the National Alliance for Autism Research?)

In other words, this is the kind of promotion your basic PTSA-Mom spends a lot of time getting, the difference being that you guys get way more appreciation than PTSA moms ever get. Trust me. The world of Volunteer Moms is the world of No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Like, um, agreeing to teach Singapore Math because the chair of the After-school program wants her son to take the course and then having the Superintendent tell the president of the PTSA that you're undermining TRAILBLAZERS.

oops!

off-topic!

A tiny riplet of suppurating rage escaped me there.

Sorry.

I'm joking. (I really am. Today is a very good day.)



Rudbeckia and Susan J on the greater-than and less-than signs

It just happened again.

I asked for thoughts about assessming flexible/inflexible knowledge at home, and Rudbeckia and Susan J left these comments:

I'm wondering if Christopher is having trouble with the comparisons (deciding which is bigger / smaller) or with the notation (which symbol to use).

[and then:]

I'm asking if he has trouble deciding which symbol to use while simultaneously remembering which number he had decided was larger.

[here's Susan J:]

I'm with Rudbeckia. My sister is an experienced OT and a generally sane and competent person who is required to use > and < in her reports of patient progress. She cannot remember which one means which and she starts screaming if I try to tell her how to remember. She's solved this problem with a sign over her desk with the these two symbols matched to what they mean in words.

By the way, if I call them "left angle bracket" and "right angle bracket" when I'm talking about some computer terminology, she has no problem at all telling them apart.




I'm blown away by both these observations.

Seriously.

I've known what the greater & less than symbols mean for so long, they're devoid of meaning, mystery, or possibility. (Though I expect that to change as I move into algebra.)

The idea that anyone could see them as anything other than mundane and obvious is new to me.

My favorite definition of art, btw, came from the Russian constructivist (any relation to our current constructivists? I have no idea).

They said art was the familiar made strange.

I often have that experience reading Contributors' posts.

I love it.



greater-than, less-than, the mnemonic

In case there's anyone who doesn't know this (I didn't), these days they teach kids that the 'big' part of the greater-than/less-than signs always points toward the big number, while the point of the sign points to the small number.

2 < 3
3 > 2

That has worked well for Christopher, though now Rudbeckia's got me wondering....



learned something new, too

Susan J also said:

BTW, being a programmer, I'm not at all sure whether 0.9066 and 0.906600 are equal or not. They may look equal on a print-out but not be equal inside the computer.

[here's Doug:]

Whether 0.9066 and 0.906600 are equal or not, they aren't equivalent. The second implies two orders of magnitude better precision. I'd probably use ≅.

Of course, in a math class, numbers are all presumed to be precise unless explicitly noted otherwise, so = is the correct symbol here.



Cool.




comments...


TracyOnDyspraxia 16 Dec 2005 - 21:23 CatherineJohnson


This is hilarious:


Dyspraxia - clumsy child syndrome. Except it doesn't go away when you get older.

Basically the bit of your brain that deals with movement isn't that good at it. Muscles are fine, decision-making is fine (e.g. should I run over there?), something just goes wrong inbetween. I have a mild case, which mostly shows up in speech - I can hop and do cursive writing and type and drive and etc, and I learnt most of how to talk without any intervention. Some kids are much worse off.

I think what happens is that my brain directs extra neurons to the job of telling my muscles what to do, so when something mentally demanding is going on I just can't manage everything.

I was extremely lucky:

  • When I was little, in NZ there was Plunkett. Plunkett was an organisation designed to ensure the welfare of NZ kids. One of the ways it did that was by monitoring children's progress. So the Plunkett nurse would ask Mum if I was jumping, or hopping, etc, and Mum would lie her head off and say I was, and then that night Mum & Dad would figure out how to teach me to jump or whatever.

  • When I was a bit older and in daycare, the childcarer noticed I had a speech problem which was bad enough for the government to spend money fixing it.

  • They didn't have a diagnosis of dyspraxia then. Their diagnosis was that I was lazy. Luckily I didn't believe I had any speech problem and thus didn't believe I was lazy.

  • Mum and the speech therapist bullied me into learning how to pronounce difficult sounds despite my firm belief I didn't have a problem.

  • When I got to school I was good at maths and reading. Lots of kids with dyspraxia get diagnosed as stupid or lazy. If you regularly get over 90% in maths test, there's a whole sterotype about absent-minded geniuses. So no matter how often I lost a battle of wits with a pencil sharpner, I was still evaluated as smart.

  • I was diagnosed about age 14, when Mum ran into my old speech therapist at the supermarket and she said "Oh, this condition has been recognised, and I think Tracy may have it, send her to this expert."

Apparently it's a diagnosis that's gotten popular in the UK - Joanne Jacobs mentioned a case once of a woman whose son was bad at maths and his teacher told the woman that "He's got dyspraxia - he'll only be able to have a career as a labourer." Which made steam come out of my ears. Firstly there was the immense stupidity of the teacher diagnosing dyspraxia without any real testing, let alone referring to an expert. Then there was the completely wrong career advice - she may as well have told the parents of a blind kid that "She'll have to give up her dreams of being a lawyer and resign herself to being a graphic designer". Talk about playing to your weakness.

Apparently the son's maths problems cleared up once he was properly taught.




We're constantly dealing with this stuff around here. Our two autistic kids can't even write their own names (well, Jimmy can do it; Andrew can't), and I have no idea why or what to do about it, although I have had numerous parent conferences with numerous occupational therapists.

Sadly, I don't know what they're talking about. I find occupational therapy to be as great a mystery as, say, modular arithmetic, which makes me feel stupid, and also makes me feel like a bad mother.

So I'm glad I read Tracy's dyspraxia story.

I feel better now.


oh and by the way—

If Susan J's occupational therapist sister feels like educating us on her profession, my life would IMPROVE.


update

I realize from the Comments thread that this post sounds as if I'm debunking occupational therapy.

That's wrong!

I think occupational therapy is a vastly important field, and I've seen it work. I just have not, ever, been able to understand the concepts. I don't know why. As a result, I've spent years feeling confused and guilty. I've ordered all kinds of OT paraphernalia, then discovered Andrew hates it, or he likes it but I don't use it....I just haven't been able to 'get it' about OT. My latest OT-ish debacle was vision therapy. Not only could I not understand a word out of our vision therapist's mouth, but he told me constantly that the reason I couldn't understand him was that I had visual processing problems. (I've never had any other occupational therapist take this tack, btw.)

Tracy's piece is well-written and funny, and when it comes to OT humor is my only defense. That's why her post makes me feel better—not because I think OT is foolish or overrated. I don't.




comments...


AnneDwyerOnTutoring 16 Dec 2005 - 21:43 CatherineJohnson


What I've noticed with my tutoring students is this: if they don't understand something in math class, they try to find a procedure or "trick" that works everytime.

Since they don't really understand it, when they have to go back and do it on a test or later, they don't remember the "trick" exactly and their answers are consistent, but wrong.

For example, I was tutoring a student in basic math. He didn't really understand that a whole number has an implied decimal after the number (e.g. 3 is really 3. for a decimal problem)

When he first learned to divide decimals and he was following the teacher's examples, he was doing the problems right: So if he was dividing .045 into 15, he moved the decimal over three places for the .045 and three places for the 15. He even managed to get it right on the first test.

But he did them wrong on every test after that. When we were studying for the final, I was able to watch him do the problems.

Since he really didn't understand, he made up his own "trick". In the problem above, he would move the decimal over for the .045 correctly, but he put the decimal point in front of any number inside the divisor sign. So .045 into 15 became 45 into 150 instead of 15,000. And, because he had taught himself this trick, he ignored all decimal points inside the divisor sign. So even .045 into 1.5 became 45 into 150.

Needless to say, it took a while to find the problem and then to correct it.

IMO, with Christopher, because the class is going so fast and he doesn't always understand what he is doing, he will figure out his own rule and then apply it. You have to go back and see exactly what he is doing when he does the problems so you can identify the error he is making.




We are in fraction & decimal he** around here, which is annoying because I don't think we would be with Saxon or Primary Mathematics—and we weren't going into this course.

This is part of what I mean when I say Christopher is 'losing knowledge' he already had, or experiencing 'math regression,' or just......getting all jumbled up. I think he is becoming uncertain of procedures and knowledge he used to have fairly well nailed-down. (Though I don't know.)

Anyway, both of the ideas here strike me as excellent ideas.

First of all, I'm going to start writing whole numbers with a decimal point and some zeros to the right. I know that will help.

And second, I'm going to keep my eye open for 'invented shortcuts.'

One strategy I've begun, which I think is going to improve matters, is that I'm continually telling him that 'math shortcuts' come from the longer equations he's learned in the past. His teacher seems to be teaching only the shortcuts—either that, or he's only picking up the shortcuts, not the explanation for why they work. Either way, the result is the same: he's learning math tricks.

Last night, when I insisted on showing him why you could invert and multiply, he got his 'eureka' smile.

I'm sure he will have forgotten what I told him by today, but I'm going to keep hammering away at this.

I do think that the basic principle—that math shortcuts come from general principles he already knows—will stay with him, and will help.


reciprocal2.jpg



reciprocal_wreck.jpg



source:
reciprocals




comments...


TheMathPage 16 Dec 2005 - 22:05 CatherineJohnson


I like The Math Page

What do you think?




comments...


IndependentGeorgeOnWriting 16 Dec 2005 - 22:11 CatherineJohnson


responding to posts by Becky C and Steve:


This reminds me of two things: Mr. Jacobs' AP American History class in the 11th grade, and Paul Salley's Calculus class in college. Mr. Jacobs' was the first class I ever took where the ratio of red marks (his comments) to blue marks (my sentences) approached 1. He didn't grade the first few essays, but instead wrote short essays of his own telling us what we needed to change. It was the first time I'd ever seen comments like, "You have offered no evidence to support this", "You claimed the exact opposite in paragraph 2", or, my personal favorite: "Interesting point - where's the followup?". (That was generally with regard to provocative points in the opening paragraph, which I never backed up later on). It was blunt, but, after that initial shock (and hurt, to be quite honest), I soon came around to seeing that everything he said was dead on.

I could write beautifully, but I'd never learned to formulate, and sustain, a coherent argument. The thing is, though, that even by the end of that year, I was still having trouble composing my essays, and would revert to my old tricks when pressed. If I couldn't find a supporting argument in one of the documents, I would just make a declaration without citing evidence. If I had two unrelated points, I would link them together with a well-turned phrase which sounded great, but held together with only the most tenuous of logic. And no matter how many times Mr. Jacobs called me out on it, and no matter how much I knew he was right, I continued to have trouble. My re-writes always fixed the problem, but I could only do it after he had already pointed them out to me. I still aced the class (I got a 5 on the AP Exam), but nevertheless couldn't get over the hump intellectually.

I finally figured it out in college, in Mr. Salley's calculus class. Unusual for a freshman class, Mr. Salley had us working on proofs from day one (easy ones, but proofs nonetheless), and would always enjoin us to "prove it" when we stated ideas that just seemed so blindingly obvious. It was in that context - seeing logic and deduction stripped almost entirely of language - that I finally learned out how to put everything together. What I couldn't do with words, I could do with a bunch of weird squiggles on a page; all I had to do was translate. It was an epiphany.

I'm not sure how useful this anecdote is (I guess I needed to spend a little more time working on the thesis). But I think it does illustrate difficult it can be to teach good writing. Mr. Jacobs wasn't a good teacher - he was a great one. And not to put too fine a point on it, I was a great student. And yet, I still had trouble. I don't think I would have ever 'gotten it' on my own, without the explicit training Mr. Salley gave us. At the same time, I never would have been able to make the connection without Mr. Jacobs' instruction; until then, I never even realized that there was a problem with my writing. Without that help, I don't think I ever would have thought to apply the same brain which decoded algebra to encode good rhetoric.


blueline.jpg



formulate and sustain a coherent argument

Ed says his entry-level Masters candidates can't write an argument (and often can't identify the argument of a text).

He doesn't say this as a 'students are so dumb today' lament. These are smart, well-educated students who possess strong skills and domain knowledge.

Another thing. There is research showing, and it's so true as to be obvious in Ed's experience, that college students can talk an argument or an idea far better than they can write an argument or an idea.

That may sound obvious, but when you see it, it's startling. People who can be cogent, coherent, and intelligent in conversation or debate can produce very poor prose—prose in which the argument they are making unravels or disappears altogether.

Neither of us knows how early in a child's education he or she can learn to formulate and sustain a coherent argument in prose. What we do know is that it's very difficult, and it seems to come after a number of years of practice.

This may not have to be the case with proper teaching, which is one of the reasons I want to know how the British teach composition. I think the British may be doing it better than we, and perhaps earlier in a student's career (though, again, I don't know).

Nevertheless, here in America, at the moment, that's the way it is. It takes a long time for a student to learn how to formulate and sustain a coherent argument in prose.

This is why I'm going to spend a great deal of time simply having Christopher read quality nonfiction essays and identify the argument, supporting evidence, and logical structure.

I'm going to use the British exercise of having a student condense and re-condense a 500-word argument into ever-shorter statements.

And I'm going to experiment with Ben Franklin's practice of reverse-engineering of persuasive essays by cutting apart the sentences and trying to reassemble them himself, like a puzzle.

It worked for him.


terrific Comments thread





comments...


ExpressiveWriting 17 Dec 2005 - 00:53 CatherineJohnson



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Ken tracked down this Direct Instruction writing curriculum from SRA. They have some interesting lessons posted online, and the Scope and Sequence categories are helpful.



He also rounded up two studies of the series:

Using the Expressive Writing Program to Improve the Writing Skills of High School Students with Learning Disabilities

Teaching Expressive Writing to Students with Learning Disabilities: A Research Synthesis



update: Smartest Tractor's pick

StepUp.jpg


Step up to Writing from SOPRIS WEST. Here's the Program Overview (pdf file)

Glancing through the Program Overview, I found the stoplight graphic I've posted below.

I like it.

I'm a fan of visual teaching in general; visuals stay with us in some way words don't seem to.

By way of support, I'll re-tell my sister-in-law anecdote.

My sister-in-law is a federal prosecutor in Philadelphia. One day we were talking about 'learning styles,' which I don't particularly believe in, but since everyone else does I don't automatically launch into a cognitive science lecture every time the subject comes up.

So we were talking about learning styles, and I said something about visual learning styles, and my sister-in-law said, "Everyone has a visual learning style."

"That's the first thing they tell you about presenting evidence to juries. If you want the jury to remember what you've said, you have to give them a visual."

I believe that.

Step Up To Writing gives kids a visual for writing that looks like it can probably be applied both to paragraphs and to entire essays. That makes sense; a paragraph can be thought of as a mini-essay.

I also very much like the stoplight metaphor. Writing should have rhythm; some parts should be fast, some slow, some in-between. That's a subtle concept to teach, and regardless of whether you try to teach rhythm explicitly, the stoplight image will be making the point.

My only problem, just on this cursory inspection, it that I find the final greenlight confusing.

I'm not used to thinking of a green light as meaning go back, and since the green light seems to take the writer to the essay's conclusion, I find 'green' for 'conclude' confusing.

However, that doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem. The conclusion in an action film is typically faster-paced than the rest of the film, and this can be true of an essay.....I think a student can probably survive the semi-breakdown of the analogy at this point.

I'll be looking forward to hearing how this program works for Smartest Tractor whose students are, IIRC, in 8th grade.


SteptoWriting.jpg



compare and contrast

graphicorganizeanonsm.jpg



'Graphic organizers' are huge these days, as far as I can tell. Everyone's using them.

If I were teaching a class of middle school kids how to write, I'd go with stoplights.




comments...


SpecialEdAndNCLB 17 Dec 2005 - 07:34 CarolynJohnston

I've been wondering how we're going to deal with the fact that the goal of NCLB -- 100% competence in reading and math by 2014 -- is impossible. Public schools can't possibly make the goal of 100% proficiency by 2014, or by any other time either. Somewhere before 2014, and I would bet it will be around 2008, schools will start failing in droves.

In quality assurance, even the top performers shoot for 'six-sigma quality', meaning they are shooting for 99.999999% compliance with quality standards -- not quite 100%. It's been clear for a while that something's got to give, and it's also been clear that the something is likely to be the standards set for compliance with NCLB.

That 100% requirement is the fatal flaw in what I think is otherwise some pretty good legislation.

If absolutely everyone has to get over the bar, the bar will have to be set very low. Another alternative is to set the bar at special heights for special students (and then, of course, you can define your low performers as special students).

Here's an excerpt from an article from yesterday's Washington Post. Look for a lot more of this in the next few years. I'd rather see them set realistic targets, and then aim high.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings outlined new testing rules for disabled students yesterday, formalizing an initiative that has already helped more than 100 public schools in Maryland and Virginia meet the standards of the No Child Left Behind law.

In a speech at Guilford Elementary in Columbia, which she cited as a model for special education, Spellings fleshed out a plan she first proposed last spring. The plan builds on existing rules that allow alternative testing for the most severely disabled students, a change that raised the scores of up to 1 percent of all students tested in a public school system or state.

Now, the Bush administration will allow modified tests for another group of special-ed students who have significant learning disabilities, emotional disorders or other impairments. That's likely to drive up scores for an additional 2 percent of students tested, state and federal officials said.

As a result, up to 3 percent of all students tested in reading and mathematics under the federal law soon may be scored as proficient through alternative or modified assessments, even though they are academically below grade level.



comments...

ThereAreOrAreNotShortcutsChooseOne 17 Dec 2005 - 20:52 CatherineJohnson


This is funny.

I picked up a book called Shortcuts for the Student Writer at Barnes and Noble today. When I looked it up on Amazon to post a picture of the cover, Rafe Asquith's book about teaching Shakespeare to disadvantaged kids also popped up. (Asquith is the Jaime Escalante of ELA.)

Title: There Are No Shortcuts.


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comments...


AnneDwyerIsObsessed 17 Dec 2005 - 22:09 CatherineJohnson


from Anne Dwyer:

How do you know you're obsessed with mathematics education?

When you walk into a used book store and have to buy a Grammar School Arithmetic book published in 1892 because you want to see what math education was like before the progressive movement got involved.

Here are some cool things that I hadn't seen before:

The book teaches how to divide by a fraction (flip and multiply) but it also teaches this method for simplifying a fraction: Reduce 3/4/5/6 to a simple fraction (of course it was written as three fourths over five sixths) The answer: divide the top and bottom by 12 which is the lowest common multiple of 4 and 6 and it reduces to 9/10. I like this method because it works just like getting an equivalent fraction.

A number is divisible by 2 if the last or right hand digit is even.

A number is divisible by 4 if the number denoted by the last two digits is divisible by 4.

A number is divisible by 8 if the number denoted by the last three digits is divisible by 8.

A number is divisible by 3 if the sum of its digits is divisible by 3.

A number is divisble by 9 if the sum of its digits is divisible by 9.

A number is divisible by 5 if its last digit is a 0 or 5.

A number is divisible by 25 if the number denoted by the last two digits is divisible by 25.

A number is divisible by 125 if the number denoted by the last three digits is divisible by 125.

A number is divisible by 6 if its last digit is even and the sum of its digits are divisible by 3.

A number is divisible by 11 if the difference between the sum of the digits in the odd places is either 0 or a multiple of 11.



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Well, I have a roped-off pew in the church of my heart for the obsessed.

Edie: An American Biography by Jean Stein


key words: divisibility




comments...


IrvingtonPtsaForum 17 Dec 2005 - 22:28 CatherineJohnson


IrvingtonPTSApulsesm.jpg



Anyone who cares to help me put together my 3-minute ideas, concerns and goals for the 2006-2007 budget, please chime in.

First and foremost, I don't want to buy more stuff.

I don't want to buy a K-5 Staff Developer, an Additional Media Specialist, an Elementary Math Enrichment Position, a new Textbook (unless it's Primary Mathematics in K-5 or Dolciani in 7th & 8th), or any more Technology.

I want Irvington to teach to mastery, not coverage, and I want a systematic program of formative assessment in all grades and classes that will let teachers, administrators, parents, and students know that mastery has occurred.

When mastery does not occur, I want immediate, effective remediation.

Oh, and I want a world class curriculum.

That's not too much to ask.

In 3 minutes.


"The mission of the Irvington School District is to create a challenging and supportive learning environment in which each student attains his or her highest potential for academic achievement, critical thinking and life-long learning."

That reminds me.

I don't want my child to attain his highest potential for academic achievement, critical thinking and life-long learning.

I want my child to attain a Singapore child's highest potential for academic achievement, critical thinking and life-long learning.




I'm going to have to spend some time studying Ken's road map.


Tell him what you are about to tell him. (the road map)

"A great curriculum has two major components: mastery teaching and formative assessment. DI is a great curriculum because it has both these things. It has mastery teaching because x; It has formative assessment because y." (You've just given the reader/listener a checklist that he can use to follow your argument to see if you've made your points)

Then tell him what you want to tell him. (the meat of the argument)

(Now you explain the x and y in detail.)

Then tell him what you just told him. (the conclusion/recap)

(Now you review the checklist.) "So you can plainly see that since DI has mastery learning because it has X and formative assessment becasue it has Y; DI is clearly a great curriculum becasue all great curricula include these things."



update

1 - 12 - 05
We went to the Forum last night. It was great.

I gather that this 'wish list' wasn't drawn up by the PTSA, but are items the School Board is considering.


see here, too


Irvington PTSA Forum
PTSA Forum Tonight
Ed's statement to the PTSA Forum
report: PTSA Forum
fact sheet for forum: Singapore Math & teaching to mastery & TIMSS gap





comments...


GeometryFractionKit 18 Dec 2005 - 16:19 CatherineJohnson



l0768229839.jpg


I wonder if I can still get one of these in time for Christmas?


Or this:

22599163_F_tn.jpg



Your calculator can't help you

(We don't need no stinkin' calculators!)




comments...


IfTheStudentHasntLearned 18 Dec 2005 - 19:51 CatherineJohnson




ktmTee3.png



revision

From Catherine:

Our new pretend-shirt specifically says "If the student hasn't learned, the school hasn't taught," not 'the teacher hasn't taught'.

No more thoughtless (and unintended) teacher-bashing.

Seriously. I'm the last person to want to make teachers feel blamed and bashed, seeing as how half my relatives have been or are currently teachers. I'm sure I'll be one again at some point, too.

The problem is that, when you talk about schools, it's the teachers who are visible. They're in the trenches, so they get the blame. (I realize I'm not telling teachers anything they don't know.) I know better than that, but I've been sounding like I don't.

Time for a course correction.

From Carolyn:

Hey, my entire family on my mother's side were also teachers, every man and woman Jack of them. I've been a teacher too; so has Catherine.

My observation is that policy flows downhill in a school, and the buck stops with the teachers. They get the responsibility, but not the authority; policy changes really have to start with upper management.

We're here to put the pressure on upper management, and support the teachers in doing what they know how to do.



comments...


DeathMarchToAlgebra 19 Dec 2005 - 02:10 CatherineJohnson


Christopher's class took the Chapter Three test on November 30.

They will take the Chapter Five (Rational Numbers and Expressions, aka fractions & decimals) test on Tuesday, December 20.


Chapter 5 content:

5-1 equivalent fractions and lowest terms
5-2 fractions and decimals
5-3 rational numbers
5-4 comparing and ordering rational numbers
5-5 adding and subtracting rational numbers
5-6 working backwards
5-7 multiplying and dividing rational numbers
5-8 rational numbers with exponents
5-9 addition and subtraction equations
5-10 multiplication equations
5-11 the stock market


After tomorrow, the kids will have had thirteen school days to study Chapter 5.

Of these, one was a snow day, and they had a substitute teacher on Friday.

So, 11 days of instruction to cover....11 huge topics. Fractions. Decimals. Equations with fractions and decimals. In 11 days.

Judging by the homework Christopher has brought home, and by what Christopher himself says, they've only gotten as far as 5-7.

That leaves three units, 5-8: rational numbers with exponents, 5-9: addition and subtraction equations, and 5-10: multiplication equations, to get through tomorrow, one day before the test.

They've had some coverage of addition and subtraction of fractions. I know this because Christopher told me yesterday that Ms. Kahl had showed them how to borrow, but it was confusing everyone, so she said they should just convert the mixed number(s) to improper fraction(s) and do the subtraction that way. That's what he was planning to do for the rest of his life.

I told Ed to tell Christopher he was going to have to learn to borrow no matter what Ms. Kahl said. Ed did, and Christopher cheerfully agreed. Boys love their dads.

We are in rote-land. Tonight Ed gave Christopher a problem like this one:

2/3 x 5/6 x 3/10

Christopher knew that he could cross out the 2 and the 10, and write a 5 next to the 10. Ed was thrilled.

Then he asked Christopher why he could do this, and Christopher said, "Ms. Kahl told us we could." They studied the properties in Chapter One, but Ms. Kahl does not seem to have pointed out in class that the commutative property and the multiplicative identity property make it possible to 'cancel' numerators and denominators. If she did tell them this, and she may have, she did no formative assessment to discover whether Christopher either heard or understood.

Apparently she keeps early office hours every day so kids can come in for extra help. I didn't know this. You'd think this information might be pointed out, stressed, and underlined for the parents, but no. The kids are, as their Grade Contract states, 'fully responsible' for their grades.....so nobody told me about it. At least, I don't remember it if they did.

I'm not that interested in 'extra help' in any case. We're way past 'extra help.'

It's obvious that the only way to get him through this is to begin serious study for the Chapter Test the minute the previous chapter test is done. We started doing fairly serious extra problems 5 days ago, but that wasn't nearly enough. I suggested to Christopher that he stay home tomorrow to study for the test. He doesn't want to.

But things may yet come to that.


pre-algebra is bunk
death march to algebra
NYU ed textbooks; NY math test





comments...


ThoughtsAboutTeacherPay 19 Dec 2005 - 04:53 CarolynJohnston

Catherine's comment that some teachers in Irvington are earning six-figure salaries led me to wonder what salaries are like for teachers in general. If some teachers are earning six-figure salaries, then my information on teacher salaries is sadly out of date.

First, I came across this 2004 study from the Economic Policy Institute on teacher pay. Here's an excerpt:

The importance of salaries (relative to other job characteristics, such as working conditions, summers off, and job flexibility) to the recruitment of high-quality teachers has also been studied in great detail. While the popular view is that teacher pay is relatively low and has not kept up with comparable professions over time, new claims suggest that teachers are actually well compensated when work hours, weeks of work, or benefits packages are taken into account. Whatever the case, the many unique features of the teaching profession have almost certainly complicated efforts to compare its compensation to that of other professions.

So: maybe teachers really have a great deal going: it's hard to tell. But then here are some of the main findings of the study:

  • Several types of analyses show that teachers earn significantly less than comparable workers, and this wage disadvantage has grown considerably over the last 10 years.

  • An analysis of weekly wage trends shows that teachers' wages have fallen behind those of other workers since 1996, with teachers' inflation-adjusted weekly wages rising just 0.8%, far less than the 12% weekly wage growth of other college graduates and of all workers.

  • A comparison of teachers' weekly wages to those of other workers with similar education and experience shows that, since 1993, female teacher wages have fallen behind 13% and male teacher wages 12.5% (11.5% among all teachers). Since 1979 teacher wages relative to those of other similar workers have dropped 18.5% among women, 9.3% among men, and 13.1% among both combined.

  • A comparison of teachers' wages to those of workers with comparable skill requirements, including accountants, reporters, registered nurses, computer programmers, clergy, personnel officers, and vocational counselors and inspectors, shows that teachers earned $116 less per week in 2002, a wage disadvantage of 12.2%. Because teachers worked more hours per week, the hourly wage disadvantage was an even larger 14.1%.

And, as if that weren't bad news enough, I also came across a study of the state of charter schools in Colorado (from 2002) that indicates charter school teachers in Colorado are getting shafted in comparison with public school teachers. Not surprising, since charter schools get a fraction of the funding that public schools get. The study also indicated that, in general, maybe the charter school teachers aren't even as well qualified as the public school teachers (but who knows what qualified means?).

The average teacher salary in charter schools in 2001-02 was 30% less than the state average salary of $40,659. This salary gap has grown slightly since 1997. In that year, the average salary for teachers in charter schools ($26,802) was about 28% less than the average teacher salary in the state of Colorado ($37,240).

Finally, searching for more data about charter schools in Colorado, I came across this highly edifying (and entertaining!) study someone did of the charter school movement in a school district in Colorado that they called a 'crucible of school choice': my very own Boulder Valley School District.

This study paints a picture of a school choice plan that is so aggressively successful that it is actually creating racial, social and intellectual inequality where there would otherwise have been none. And we know that this is true, because BVSD is almost uniformly populated by families that are white, wealthy, and highly edumacated.

BVSD procedures and practices are a potentially important factor in the patterns of stratification. First, the practice of prominently displaying test scores in the local newspaper's annual open-enrollment insert, as well as on district and school Web pages, helps explain the prominence of test scores in the demand for BVSD schools. Second, requiring parents to obtain their own information on open enrollment, providing most information in English only, requiring parents to visit schools in which they wish to open-enroll their children, and requiring them to provide their own transportation help explain why choice has a stratifying effect. This system favors parents with savvy, time, and resources. It also favors parents who are connected to the parent information network, the importance of which was shown by how prominent word of mouth was as a student recruitment method.

So here is the picture I end up with: teacher pay stinks, and the stinkiest teacher pay of all is happening at the most elite schools in my own hometown. What sense does this make?

We visited one of the charter schools in BVSD, Summit Middle School, during the open enrollment period last year (Summit is pseudonymized as 'Pinnacle' in the BVSD school choice article). Summit has very highly educated and dedicated teachers, most of whom could easily have jobs elsewhere. They have their pick of the best students in BVSD because their requirements (for homework and the like) scare off all but the strongest students and the most ambitious parents. There is the sense, at Summit, of an elite learning community; that bright, hardworking kids are being trained for brilliant futures. And there are also summers off; why wouldn't a person want to teach there?

Look no farther than Summit to understand why schools in general are having a hard time retaining quality teachers. When I left Florida Atlantic University, my salary was 32K per year, and had grown slower than inflation for several years. I wasn't crazy about that, but the low salary wasn't keeping me from pursuing a career as a math professor. Being a math professor was a profession in which I could pursue my interests and retain my self-respect.

I still think the self-respect issue is at the heart of our teacher qualification problems in this country. It's a self-perpetuating problem; teachers don't get respect, people who demand respect won't consider the profession, so it attracts underqualified people (or, less frequently, extremely dedicated ones). How do you fix that problem? And how come nobody ever talks about it?



comments...


FormativeAssessmentSummary 19 Dec 2005 - 14:46 CatherineJohnson


the OECD weighs in

The educational gains associated with formative assessment have been described as “among the largest ever reported for educational interventions.”
source:
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development


summary of Black & Wiliam

(full passage quoted below)

  • formative assessment: all activities schools, teachers, and students undertake to collect information that can be used diagnostically to alter curriculum, teaching, and learning

  • information gleaned from formative assessment allows teachers to make necessary instructional adjustments: reteaching, trying alternative instructional approaches, or offering students more opportunities for practice. Formative assessment allows schools to make necessary curricular adjustments.

  • Black and Wiliam literature review of 250 journal articles and book chapters: formative assessment produces significant learning gains, with effect sizes ranging between .4 and .7

  • students need specific comments about errors and specific suggestions for improvement; formative assessment is designed to provide this information

  • formative assessment allows teachers and students to identify gaps in students' skills and understanding and guides them through the process of remediating those gaps

  • formative assessment instills confidence in teachers, parents, and students that all students can 'learn to high levels'

  • formative assessment in the form of self-assessment and self-monitoring improves student learning when students understand the assessment criteria

  • specific feedback from formative assessment "emphasizes that students can improve as a result of effort rather than be doomed to low achievement due to some presumed lack of innate ability"

  • Black and Wiliam: low-achieving students, including students diagnosed with LD, improve most

source:
The Concept of Formative Assessment by Carol Boston


Purpose and Benefits of Formative Assessment

Black and Wiliam (1998b) define assessment broadly to include all activities that teachers and students undertake to get information that can be used diagnostically to alter teaching and learning. Under this definition, assessment encompasses teacher observation, classroom discussion, and analysis of student work, including homework and tests. Assessments become formative when the information is used to adapt teaching and learning to meet student needs.

When teachers know how students are progressing and where they are having trouble, they can use this information to make necessary instructional adjustments, such as reteaching, trying alternative instructional approaches, or offering more opportunities for practice. These activities can lead to improved student success.

Black and Wiliam (1998a) conducted an extensive research review of 250 journal articles and book chapters winnowed from a much larger pool to determine whether formative assessment raises academic standards in the classroom. They concluded that efforts to strengthen formative assessment produce significant learning gains as measured by comparing the average improvements in the test scores of the students involved in the innovation with the range of scores found for typical groups of students on the same tests. Effect sizes ranged between .4 and .7, with formative assessment apparently helping low-achieving students, including students with learning disabilities, even more than it helped other students (Black and Wiliam, 1998b).

Feedback given as part of formative assessment helps learners become aware of any gaps that exist between their desired goal and their current knowledge, understanding, or skill and guides them through actions necessary to obtain the goal (Ramaprasad, 1983; Sadler, 1989). The most helpful type of feedback on tests and homework provides specific comments about errors and specific suggestions for improvement and encourages students to focus their attention thoughtfully on the task rather than on simply getting the right answer (Bangert-Drowns, Kulick, & Morgan, 1991; Elawar & Corno, 1985). This type of feedback may be particularly helpful to lower achieving students because it emphasizes that students can improve as a result of effort rather than be doomed to low achievement due to some presumed lack of innate ability. Formative assessment helps support the expectation that all children can learn to high levels and counteracts the cycle in which students attribute poor performance to lack of ability and therefore become discouraged and unwilling to invest in further learning (Ames, 1992; Vispoel & Austin, 1995).

While feedback generally originates from a teacher, learners can also play an important role in formative assessment through self-evaluation. Two experimental research studies have shown that students who understand the learning objectives and assessment criteria and have opportunities to reflect on their work show greater improvement than those who do not (Fontana & Fernandes, 1994; Frederikson & White, 1997). Students with learning disabilities who are taught to use self-monitoring strategies related to their understanding of reading and writing tasks also show performance gains (McCurdy & Shapiro, 1992; Sawyer, Graham, & Harris, 1992).




key worsd: gapology
James Milgram on long division & time
can you cram math: learning a year of math in 2 months
overlearning
remediating Los Angeles algebra students
Inflexible Knowledge: The First Step to Expertise by Daniel Willingham
Matt Goff & Susan S on remediating gaps
Anne Dwyer on diagnosing gaps & request for 'gap' stories
failing algebra in Los Angeles
formative assessment
formative assessment in a nutshell





comments...


RiseOfTheSixFigureTeacher 19 Dec 2005 - 16:16 CatherineJohnson


6-figureteachers2.jpg


6-figureteachers3.jpg

But in Central Islip, where 40 percent of families with children in the schools are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies, the high school is on the state's list of schools needing improvement. Nearly one in five teachers in Central Islip makes $100,000 or more, and Yvette Camacho, a school board member, says ''Our taxpayers cannot afford them.''

''Our taxpayers are your average Joes who work two jobs to pay the mortgage,'' Ms. Camacho said. ''We have wonderful teachers. But some are not wonderful, and they're making $115,000.''

Rise of the Six-Figure Teacher by Ford Fessenden and Josh Barbanel NYT May 15, 2005



Overall, our teachers make far more money than I do, and their health and retirement benefits are generous and secure. Yes, there are years when my income is higher than a teacher's. Those are the years when I get healthy book advances. The years when I'm actually writing the book I'm being paid to write are extremely low-income years. When you average it out, I'd be much better off working as a teacher, not a writer. Even as a bestselling author—and my advance for ANIMALS IN TRANSLATION was very high—I earn less than teachers here in Irvington.

And nobody sets up a pension for a writer.

Meanwhile I'm spending thousands of dollars on materials and KUMON programs to teach my children what our faculty and administration aren't teaching them. I'm sacrificing thousands more in lost income.

And I have now had the experience of witnessing an Irvington teacher bully my child, as I foot the bill for an expensive and time-consuming Character Education Program for the kids. The Character Education Program seems to take place primarily during Study Skills, which brings me to yet another aggravation-making irony: Christopher did not learn study skills in Study Skills class. Then, when his grades reflected the fact that he does not know how to study, his Study Skills teacher had him sign a Grade Contract acknowledging 'full responsibility.'

So at this point I'm what you call a grumpy taxpayer. I really can't read another word on the teachers-are-underpaid theme.

When I start seeing articles about writers being underpaid, maybe I'll feel differently.

Just call me 'Average Joe!'


and one more thing!

AND Ed just read the NYRB review of that big, long history of Ivy League admissions......and the review said that any child living in a circle around Manhattan is at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to getting into elite schools, because the schools are looking for geographical diversity (and I'm assuming not quite so many Jewish last names, though I didn't read the article).

So I'm thinking:

a) we change Christopher's last name from Berenson to Johnson

b) we give my brother's address in Chatham, IL when we apply to colleges

um.....that leaves the question of how to disguise the location of K-12 Schools Attended.

I'll think of something.

Maybe we'll just move to Chatham for senior year.




comments...


ImSorry 19 Dec 2005 - 19:46 CatherineJohnson


I'm realizing belatedly that the 'Students Haven't Learned' t-shirt is insulting to teachers. That is radically not what I had in mind.

I'm sorry!

The slogan on the t-shirt actually comes from a Siegried Engelmann program where the teachers themselves wore shirts that said, "If the learner hasn't learned, the teacher hasn't taught." The teachers wore the t-shirts because they were part of a Direct Instruction program that gave them the means and the administrative backing to make this promise and keep it. They were making a professional statement.

I took the slogan out of context, and I ought to know better seeing as how my job is writing.

Writing means knowing what the words you use mean to other people, not just to you.

What the shirt should say is "If the student hasn't learned, the school hasn't taught."

That, I do believe, although I'm afraid there may be caveats here, too. How much can a middle school do to teach kids who've lost ground in K-6 and now have the hormones, emotions, and preoccupations of pre-teens?

I don't know.

In any case, I'm sorry for posting an image that made people feel slammed when they saw it. That wasn't the effect I intended, but I know it's the effect I had.


what can one teacher do?

All of this leads me to a question I think about fairly often.

How much can one teacher do?

Formative assessment is, I think, a fantastically powerful tool. I'm convinced that a policy of systematic formative assessment would allow a school to make a fair amount of headway even with middle-school and older students who have, as Rudbeckia put it, 'baggage' when they get to a teacher's class.

But it's the principal's job, not the teacher's, to put in place a policy of systematic formative assessment. The principal is the educational leader, and the ultimate authority inside the school. It's the principal who can supply the institutional resources and support to embed formative assessment inside all courses and classes.

My question is, if the school doesn't adopt a policy of formative assessment, can one teacher do it alone?

It's obvious that one teacher, on his or her own, can do formative assessment to some extent. There are at least two teachers using formative assessment at the middle school. And ktm Contributors have left comments describing math teachers they had in high school who used formative assessment.

But how far can one teacher take this without institutional support?

Another thought experiment: could Christopher's math teacher create her own system of formative assessment, as Carol Gambill did?

Again, I'm not sure.

She's required to get through a huge amount of content—way too much for Christopher and at least half the class or possibly more.

Given how material she has to cover (and I do mean 'cover,' not 'teach'), could she justify taking time in class each day for formative assessment?

I'm thinking this might be time well spent, in spite of the coverage requirement.

But I don't know.

I've had one teacher describe her frustration with the Irvington administration for not having an answer to the question: "Am I teaching for mastery, or teaching for coverage?"

She had asked this question more than once. No one had given her an answer.

That is an administrative failure, not a teacher failure.




comments...


OnwardAndUpwardWithMsKozak 19 Dec 2005 - 22:58 CatherineJohnson


Oh boy, Christopher is a happy guy.

He's in heaven.

He moved to Ms. Kozak's class today, and came home filled with Ms. Kozak stories.

"Ms. Kozak is giving us spelling," he said. "She gives a weekly spelling list. We have to take a spelling test on Friday."

"Ms Kozak taught us all the verbs, and she made us take notes. She told us about active verbs."

"Ms. Kozak taught us what constructive criticism is. Then she made everybody trade their drafts with their 5 o'clock peer partners."

Apparently Ms. Kozak has the kids fill out a clock with different peer partners, so they can switch around amongst the different kids when they exchange their work. Today they were looking at the subparagraph (something like that), the lead, and the 'hook.'

"They were really good," Christopher said, speaking of the other kids' works in progress. "I read them. They were really good."

"She gives us homework, too," he said, sounding like homework from English class was a gift.

So that's the silver lining, one of them anyway. Christopher now believes that a teacher who teaches isn't someone you take for granted.

"I did a good impression," he said, too. "I answered all the questions. I did a good impression."

That frosts me.

Here is a child so eager to please, so wanting to do well in school, that he's thinking how to make a good impression even though he's still too young to know that people 'make a good impression,' not 'do a good impression.'

Mrs. Roth has a criminal heart.



meanwhile, back at the ranch

The other kids are still ragging Christopher about Mrs. Roth.

"You made Mrs. Roth feel bad." etc. The girl who's Mrs. Roth's perceived favorite gave him the finger. They don't make teachers' pets like they used to.

Another child reported that Mrs. Roth had said to the children, in class today, that the grade she gave Christopher 'was fair.'

Needless to say, that prompted an email to the principal.




comments...


GuiltRidden 20 Dec 2005 - 05:36 CarolynJohnston

Ben is having a tough time of it.

Some of you who've been around KTM a while may recall that Ben's new middle school unexpectedly adopted Connected Math this year, and that after a trial period with the hybrid Connected Math-Prentice Hall curriculum (during which he got to do the famous My Special Number Project), I asked to have him transferred to an independent-study version of Homeschool Saxon Math 8/7.

He's been doing the Saxon curriculum for around 8 weeks now. As always, I'm pleased with the curriculum itself; it jumps around a bit, but gives the sort of regular, distributed practice kids need in order to achieve mastery in math. It's a substantial pre-algebra curriculum, unlike Connected Math, and unlike Prentice-Hall Math Course 1, the book has a format which minimizes distractions (Prentice-Hall is one of those texts with 8 colors on every page, and distracting photographs of athletes and baby elephants on most pages).

But the story's not a happy one. He misses his teacher, whom he liked (she's a nice and experienced teacher, and I think she was downstream of the Connected Math decision), and he misses his classmates. He feels singled out for this treatment; he wants so badly to be just like the other kids; he wonders, I imagine, if it's some kind of punishment. And he's obsessing about it as only a high-functioning autistic kid can obsess.

His babysitter tells me that he goes and visits his former teacher's math class every day after school. He doesn't necessarily talk with her, though he sometimes does; today, apparently, he just sat in the classroom with his head on his arms. He talks about his former teacher frequently; he wants to be in the regular class again so badly. We've explained repeatedly that he's not doing independent study now because there is anything wrong with him; in fact, his current curriculum is accelerated relative to the one he was in. We've even asked him what he thought of the "my special number" project, and whether he really thinks he learned anything from that; he says no. He knows it was a waste of time. And yet he can't 'move on'; moving on is a lot to ask of any kid.

I didn't want this to happen. If I'd wanted Ben educated separately, I could have sent him to his neighborhood school and saved myself the huge commute. I worked hard (and fought the open-enrollment system) to get Ben into a school that had a non-constructivist math curriculum; we had struggled for two years with Everyday Math. Constructivist math just throws unnecessary roadblocks in the way of a literal-minded kid with social problems and a limited attention span. We had to navigate the open-enrollment system in order to get him into one of the few remaining schools in BVSD that didn't have Connected Math, so that he could be with his classmates in the regular math program.

But the first day of school, I discover that the school has decided over the summer to adopt Connected Math in its regular math classes. We gave it a try; but I called an end to it after Ben failed to complete a project because he hadn't been given a crack at the instructions that his group was sharing.

And now, I feel like the Grinch who stole Christmas, and I am sure that his teachers at his middle school think I'm a heartless zealot. But I worked hard to give my son exactly what he needed; a math classroom, with a good experienced math teacher, and other kids, and a high-quality, traditional-leaning math curriculum. It's not my fault that they didn't deliver what was advertised.



comments...


TheLearningBrain 20 Dec 2005 - 15:28 CatherineJohnson


wow!

My new copy of Trends in Cognitive Neuroscience just arrived, with a review of this book:

blakemore140.jpg


The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education by SARAH-JAYNE BLAKEMORE (cognitive neuroscience, University College, London) and UTA FRITH (cognitive development, University College, London).

Frith may be the most important autism researcher we have; she'd certainly rank in the top 5. (Carolyn?)


table of contents

1. Introduction

2. The Developing Brain

3. Words and Numbers in Early Childhood

4. The Mathematical Brain

5. The Literate Brain

6. Learning to Read and its Difficulties

7. Disorders of Social-Emotional Development

8. The Adolescent Brain

9. Life Long Learning

10. Learning and Remembering

11. Different Ways of Learning

12. Harnessing the Learning Powers of the Brain

Appendix

Glossary

References

Further Reading

Index


The Introduction (pdf file) is posted online. If it's half as good as I expect it to be, I'm ordering the book today.

I have to get to Andrew's field trip, so I'll post the TRENDS review later. Looks like it's very positive.


politics, eduation, & cognitive science

At the time, the Early Years Education subcommittee was holding an inquiry into the appropriate care and education of children between birth and six years. The subcommittee had been bombarded with letters, reports, and manifestos from early years charities, schools, psychologists, and educators, many of whom cited research on brain development as grounds for changing early years education in the UK. Some of the arguments put forward contradicted each other. On the one hand, some argued that formal education should not start until six or seven years old because the brain is not ready to learn until this age. On the other hand, others argued that it was clear from research on brain development that children should be “hothoused”—taught as much as possible as early as possible. What were the Members of Parliament on the subcommittee to make of the conflicting evidence?

Both authors were engaged in these kinds of debates when, in June 2000, we compiled a report for the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to indicate whether insights from neuroscience could inform the research agenda in education.






comments...

ProceduralLearning 20 Dec 2005 - 15:39 CatherineJohnson



basalganglia.jpg




comments...


AgingBrain 20 Dec 2005 - 18:58 CatherineJohnson



agingbrainlg.jpg


But can the aging brain learn calculus.

That's the question.




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DanOnWritingProcess 20 Dec 2005 - 19:14 CatherineJohnson


Most of my writing involved creating technical white papers, proposals to customers, or presentations of experimental research. You usually begin with an introduction and end with a conclusion/summary. Beyond that, there often wasn’t much of a template. I would generally begin writing by typing key ideas into the word processor with lots of white space in between. These were generally sentence fragments. Sometimes, though, an elegant phrase would occur to me, so I might type in a few whole sentences. Only in the roughest sense would this be considered an outline. Some of these fragments would become section headings; others would end up as list items in bullet lists. As I went along, I would just keep putting more meat on the bones. Also, as things took shape, I would continually re-arrange the order of things. Sometimes you lay out the plan first, then highlight the key nuggets therein. Other times, you lead with your value proposition, then lay out the plan that delivers it. You don’t necessarily know which will work better right off the bat.

I was never formally taught to do things this way. As I said, I make no claim that it is a particularly good way to write. It seems to work for me, though—most of the time. I think the exception is interesting. A few years back, I took a standardized certification test. One section was an essay. I had to write it with pencil and paper in a test booklet. I found this very difficult. I am very reliant on word processing software, and the flexibility it gives me to easily re-arrange, insert, and delete redundancy once I detect it. The standardized test essay forced me to write linearly, from beginning to end. This seems to me to be a very artificial constraint. It makes me skeptical of standardized tests of writing.



It never occurred to me that word processors might affect the way people write.

I became a writer before anyone had personal computers. I used to write longhand, in pencil, and I had an 'embedding scheme,' where I'd put a zillion different phrasing options inside one sentence, in brackets. That way, when I went back & re-read, I could cross out the ones I didn't like.

It looked like this, only in messy handwriting:


I [became / was / wanted to be] a [writer / start writing] before I had a [computer / word processor / before personal computers were invented] ....... etc.


On first read-through I'd do as much crossing out as I could, which was never enough; then I might change the crossings-out on the 3rd read-through, or I might add in some new options-in-brackets, and so it went. I could fill up an entire sheet of paper with just one sentence and its multiple choices.

As I was reading Dan's post, it struck me that I was trying to do word processing without a word processor.


blueline.jpg


I find the kind of writing that (I think) Dan is doing extremely difficult.

In fact, I find it agonizing, not to put too fine a point on it.

No, agonizing isn't the word. I don't have a word.*

It's the same kind of writing you have to do for a book proposal, where you have two purposes:

a) write well about your subject

b) sell your subject



I'm just, today, putting a reasonably close-to-final draft of Temple's & my new book proposal in the mail to her. The whole thing has been driving me crazy for months.

First of all, it took forever to figure out what our central idea is. I think it only came to me last month, finally. Up 'til then, the central idea was: Write a sequel to Animals in Translation.

Figuring out a central idea is hard enough, but when you're writing a book proposal, not a book, having a central idea is just the beginning.

You can't just have a central idea, you have to have what Hollywood types used to call a 'high concept.' (They may still call it that, I don't know.)

Turning a central idea into a high concept is he**.




* Yes, I do have a word. I have a whole phrase. Our friend Rachel used this phrase to describe her first encounter with, yes, a word processor, the original KayPro II.

She said, 'Well you know how it is trying to learn to word process. You spend a week in an agitated state."

That's book proposal writing, except it's not a week. It's months.



kayproii.jpg





comments...


ConnectedMathForParents 20 Dec 2005 - 19:58 CatherineJohnson


Becky C tracked down an important website for parents of children using Connected Math: Connected Math for Parents.

I was trying to dig up information on Investigations this weekend to assist me in connecting the boys' curriculum at school with our Singapore curriculum at home. The parent letters given out with each Investigations unit, and the game rules for each homework activity, are inadequate to explain the point of each activity. The desirable, final, procedural, and conceptual point of each activity. Lacking a Teacher's Guide, I have to rely on my Superior Reasoning Skills to figure out the point. Until January, when I may get up the courage to ask for my own copy of the Teacher's Guide, to keep. Which is probably illegal.

But for you, you can check out this parent guide for Connected Math. Go through the Concepts and Connections link for any unit, and then download a PDF of the C and C document.

I was AMAZED and favorably IMPRESSED that these folks have the courage of their convictions to put this out for parents to see and to work with. It must be the same as what's in the Teacher's Guide for Connected Math.



I thought the first 3 pages of the fractions homework were pretty good. After that the lesson seems to unravel a bit, with numerous references to 'different ways students may do this,' etc.

I'm curious what others think.




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CongratulationsAlex 20 Dec 2005 - 20:28 CatherineJohnson




congratsballoonsbig.jpg





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CarolynGooglesMsRoth 20 Dec 2005 - 21:25 CarolynJohnston

Since Catherine no longer checks her email, I figure I need to post this here so she'll see it.

I just couldn't believe that noone in Irvington is reading this blog with all its juicy Irvington tidbits. How could they miss it? Surely Ms Roth is reading this blog every night and vowing hideous revenge. So I checked the most likely avenue for approach -- Google -- to see if the name "Ms Roth" brings one to our door.

The answer is no, it doesn't. But the good news is that Ms. Roths are everywhere!

Here's a selection from Google:

The Carrier-Roth debate: Is there a Secular Case Against Abortion? Ms. Roth says yes.

Go to Ms. Roth’s next selection Go to Ms. Roth’s next selection. Go to Ms. Roth’s previous selection Go to Ms. Roth’s previous selection.

Ms. Roth has experience in the areas of antitrust and complex commercial litigation as ... Major cases litigated by Ms. Roth at Constantine Cannon include: ...

Ms. Roth will be accompanied by violinist Leonardo Suarez Paz and bassist ... "I love performing," says Ms. Roth. "It gives me the joy of sharing my musical ...

Ms. Roth is experienced in aquatic ecology, biological and habitat assessment, ... An environmental scientist specializing in aquatic ecology, Ms. Roth ...

In Part One, Ms. Roth discusses the problem of overeating and dieting. ... Through her eating principles and practices, Ms. Roth guides the viewer in ...



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EyeContactInAutism 21 Dec 2005 - 05:09 CarolynJohnston

Somehow I missed this result when it came out.

Anyone who knows someone with even a mild autism spectrum disorder knows how difficult it can be to get the person to look at you. Their gaze just slides off your chin. It's hard to believe that it's just that they aren't interested in your face, as many theorists have suggested; their avoidance of eye contact is so marked that it's hard to feel there isn't some kind of aversion there. This article in Scientific American (from March 2005) seems to explain why.

Children suffering from autism pay very little attention to faces, even those of people close to them. Indeed, this characteristic can become apparent as early as the age of one, and is often used as a developmental sign of the disease. The results of a new study provide additional insight into why autistic children avoid eye contact: they perceive faces as an uncomfortable threat, even if they are familiar.

Children suffering from autism pay very little attention to faces, even those of people close to them. Indeed, this characteristic can become apparent as early as the age of one, and is often used as a developmental sign of the disease. The results of a new study provide additional insight into why autistic children avoid eye contact: they perceive faces as an uncomfortable threat, even if they are familiar.

Kim M. Dalton of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her colleagues studied 27 autistic teenagers who looked at pictures of faces (see image) while a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine scanned their brains. The researchers also tracked the subjects' eye movements as they studied the images. "This is the very first published study that assesses how individuals with autism look at faces while simultaneously monitoring which of their brain areas are active," Dalton says. When the image included a direct gaze from a nonthreatening face, brain activity in the amygdala--a brain region associated with negative feelings--was much higher for autistic children than it was in members of the control group. "Imagine walking through the world and interpreting every face that looks at you as a threat, even the face of your own mother," remarks study co-author Richard Davidson, also at UW-Madison.

The results also indicate that a brain area associated with face perception, known as the fusiform region, is fundamentally normal in autistic children; it does exhibit decreased activity, however. Davidson notes that this could result because the over-aroused amygdala makes an autistic child want to look away from faces. In addition, he comments that it was surprising that "when subjects with autism averted their gaze away from the eye region of a face, they showed reduced activity in the amygdala, suggesting that the gaze aversion is serving a functional purpose." The findings are published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience.



comments...


LightAndDarkPhotoblog 21 Dec 2005 - 15:51 CatherineJohnson




00310.jpg




I have a widget by Kevin Crafts on my desktop. His work is beautiful. A lot of the photos have been taken in Boulder County, CO.

Animal shots are here.




comments...


StrikeForChristmas 21 Dec 2005 - 17:20 CatherineJohnson



So far this Christmas season the kids and I have not seen:

  • the topiary lights at the Botanical Garden

  • the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree

  • the laser light show at Grand Central

Now we have a strike.

I think I'm going to take the kids into the city anyway. I can do that, because I have no common sense-y.



gcentral2.jpg



Christmasstrike3.jpg



The real question is, can I force Ed to come with me?

Answer: almost certainly not.

I bet Christian would do it. I'll get to him tonight.

After I spent 3 hours standing in line at the Ringside Fest so he and Christopher could get Kurt Angle's autograph, he owes me.




comments...


TeachingMathToTeachers 21 Dec 2005 - 22:25 CatherineJohnson


Susan J left a link to Racial Equity Requires Teaching Elementary School Teachers More Mathematics (pdf file) by Patricia Clark Kenschaft.

I'm just beginning it, but so far it's right up my alley:

Seventy-five black people with at least one degree in mathematics responded to a variety of questions, including, “What can be done to bring more blacks into mathematics?”

[snip]

[the most common answer by far was] “Teach mathematics better to all American children. The way it is now, if children don’t learn mathematics at home, they don’t learn it at all, so any ethnic group that is underrepresented in mathematics will remain so until children are taught mathematics better in elementary school.”

[snip]

Like most Americans, I found it difficult to believe how poorly prepared mathematically they are.mathematically by our system. They need to be taught. I have found them eager and quick to learn—and appallingly ignorant of the most basic mathematics.

“Teach us math! Teach us math! Teach us math!” chanted dozens of elementary school teachers during one after-school workshop. There was an amazed silence while we all absorbed what had just happened. Then one of them said, “If you taught us math the way you did just now, we could teach it to the children.” They all nodded emphatically. This incident followed my statement that those of us who thrive mathematically have had some good mathematical experience early, typically at home. Someone had asked for an example out of my own childhood, and I had explained how my father had described the meaning of pi to me several months before I started kindergarten. Their response was the chanting, “Teach us math!”



The rest of the article is an account of Kenschaft's math classes for elementary school teachers.

I believe we need far less ed school and far more on-the-job training.

For me, that would include classes like Kenschaft's.

It's not reasonable to expect thousands of math majors to pour into K-8 education.

It is reasonable to expect that the dedicated and able people who've gone into K-8 education can continue to learn elementary school mathematics on the job, as Chinese teachers do. Chinese teachers typically have the equivalent of a high school education here, and their knowledge of math is not astonishing when they begin work. I imagine they start at a higher level than our teachers do—I'd have to check to see whether Liping Ma addresses this—but the fact is, Chinese teachers gain profound knowledge of elementary mathematics by studying the high-quality textbooks they must teach and meeting with colleagues to discuss those books.

If we think all kids can learn math, why don't we think all teachers can learn math?

The fact that they didn't learn math in their own schools & colleges is no reason to think they can't possibly learn math now, when they're employed and motivated to do their jobs well.

Ed ran summer institutes for high school history teachers. They were starved for real history and real colleagues, and they were smart.

That's the kind of professional development I'd like to see.

Let's have fewer Workshops on Differentiated Instruction, and more Summer Institutes in math, reading, writing, and history.


kids teaching kids

It has been my observation that the reason that scores are higher in white districts is that some parents teach their children mathematics at home, and these children teach many of the others. It has appeared to me that the teachers are no better prepared in the high-scoring districts.


I wouldn't be surprised to learn that elementary school teachers in high-scoring districts are no better prepared in mathematics than teachers in low-scoring districts—although I guess I'd been assuming that they were.

What did take me by surprise was Kenschaft's blunt statement that we parents are the entire reason high-scoring schools are high-scoring.

And I was gobsmacked by her assertion that kids like ours, who are being taught math at home, are in turn teaching math to other kids at school.

That possibility simply hadn't crossed my mind.

Which is funny, because Christopher taught his fourth grade partner-in-flunking how to do two-digit times two-digit multiplication.

Christopher. A kid who a couple of months before had been flunking math.

His friend hadn't gotten any remedial teaching at home, so Christopher taught him multiple-digit multiplication.

Our assistant superintendent told me that another kid in his school taught him algebra. A kid! The teacher was impossible, he said (and later on took credit for the Asst. Superintendent's progress.)

Of course, I was suitably scandalized by this story.

But it didn't occur to me to wonder how it was that the friend happened to know algebra.


blueline.jpg



You hear it said, often, that schools like Irvington's have high scores because their parents have high SES.

It's time to operationalize that statement.

How exactly does a high SES translate to my kid knows how to divide fractions?

Forget IQ differences, real or not; no one has an IQ so high he just naturally knows how to divide fractions. People have to learn how to divide fractions, which means someone has to teach them.

If Kenschaft is right, those people are the math brain parents and their kids.



it's always worse than you think

[The] principal invited me to consider that school “my school”. He and the teachers really wanted to help the students. Its students had a median achievement in mathematics of about the 25th percentile on the “Iowas”, one of the lowest levels in Newark. I am now convinced that its rank was due to the fact that the principal did not pressure the teachers to cheat in any way on standardized tests. When I told him this years later, his eyes widened. He was president of the principals’ union. “What? You are saying…” I nodded. Since then I have read numerous reports of systemic cheating on standardized tests and other forms of deception by school administrators...


A friend of mine was, I think, president of the PTSA in an affluent district when it was discovered that a teacher was cheating on the tests. She was walking around the room telling the kids the answers, IIRC. The principal put the teacher on leave, and the school blew up. The other teachers were bitterly upset; the parents went to war (many parents supported the teacher and attacked the parents who had complained as whistleblowers); many, many students left.

I lost contact with that friend not long after, so I have no idea whether the school even survived.

This was not a school in Newark.



communication skills for the 21st century

During my first class teaching elementary school children, a fifth grader raised his hand and asked, “What is that word you keep using instead of take away?” Enter “minus”—for fifth graders!




fast change

The best first-grade teacher told me she never bothered to teach subtraction during the first half of the year because the children couldn’t learn everything at once. I started visiting the school in October, and it seemed to me natural to teach addition and subtraction together. She told me she would not reinforce my teaching of subtraction between my weekly visits, and I said that was no problem.

One of the games I played with the children was holding five unifix blocks in front of me, putting them behind my back, and bringing forward three. “How many are behind my back?” I asked. The children could answer correctly. Then I told them that one way of writing this was “5 – 3 = 2”.

“Oh, no!” said the teacher.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because subtraction means “take away” and you took away two blocks. So it should be written ‘5 – 2 = 3.’” I explained that subtraction could mean “take away”, but it could also mean “missing addend”. It seemed to me that since the children could see three blocks, “5 – 3 = 2” was preferable, but “5 – 2 = 3” is not wrong. The next week we explored the “difference” meaning of subtraction and the “motion” meaning. (I walk five steps toward the window and three steps away. How many steps am I from where I began?)

She was startled when half the children passed the subtraction part of the November standardized test—without any reinforcement from her. She had never had a child pass it before. The crucial role of mathematical knowledge on the part of the teacher was becoming obvious to me.





white people can't jump (update 6-26-06: what does this heading mean?)

My first time in a fifth grade in one of New Jersey’s most affluent districts (white, of course), I asked where one-third was on the number line. After a moment of quiet, the teacher called out, “Near three, isn’t it?” The children, however, soon figured out the correct answer; they came from homes where such things were discussed. Flitting back and forth from the richest to the poorest districts in the state convinced me that the mathematical knowledge of the teachers was pathetic in both. It appears that the higher scores in the affluent districts are not due to superior teaching in school but to the supplementary informal “home schooling” of children.


The only thing wrong with this observation is: it's not so informal.

I'm working my tushie off here.

(more t/k)


original thread about teacher preparation




comments...


TakeTheKtmChallenge 22 Dec 2005 - 06:10 CarolynJohnston

Here's a sample problem from the Connected Math for parents material that BeckyC found:

Dario made 3 pizzas which he sliced into quarters. After considering how many people he would be sharing with, he thought to himself, 'each person can have a half.'

a. Is it possible that there was only one person to share with? How?
b. Is it possible that there were 5 other people to share with? How?
c. Is it possible that there were 11 other people to share with? How?

I imagine that as a sixth grader myself, I would have stared at this problem for a while, trying to figure out not what the answer to the problem was, but what the question could possibly be getting at with the 3 pizzas and the cutting them into quarters and Dario and his thoughts about a half of something.

Here's the answer (bold-faces are all Connected Math's):

This question illustrates how the actual amount can vary, but still be called a 'half', depending on the size of the 'whole'.

a. If there was only one other person to share with then Dario's comment means that Dario will have half of the total amount of pizza, and so will the other person. (This would mean one and a half pizzas each).
b. If there were 5 other people to share with than Dario's comment would mean that each person could have half of a pizza. (6 people each getting half of a pizza would use a total of 3 pizzas).
c. If there were 11 other people than each person would get a quarter of a pizza. Dario's comment would have to mean that each person gets half of a half-pizza. (12 quarters would be the same as 3 pizzas).

There's just something so awkward and convoluted about this problem, one has the sense that the same point could have been gotten at in a much more effective and straightforward way. Maybe this is because I learned mathematics all the wrong way in the bad old days and need to relearn it, but you know what? I don't think so.

And therefore I offer the following

KTM challenge: construct a problem that achieves the desired end without being misleading or convoluted.



comments...


WritingQuirks 22 Dec 2005 - 18:57 CatherineJohnson



Announcing an unofficial poll of writing quirks.

Here's what we've got so far:

Inspirationktm.jpg


Here's Carolyn's version:

writing-quirks.jpg



Carolyn used an open source thing called VYM (visualize your mind) for diagramming. I used Inspiration, which is the adult version of Kidspiration.



Rapid Problem Solving with Post-It Notes

I'm seriously considering dumping the fancy-schmancy graphical organizer and going to a bulletin board, index cards, and push-pins.

Or else Post-It Notes.


1778409.gif





comments...


NewYorkStateMathTestGrade6 22 Dec 2005 - 19:22 CatherineJohnson


New York state Sample Test Mathematics Grade 6 Book 1 (pdf file)

New York state Sample Test Mathematics Grade 6 Book 2 (pdf file)


I haven't looked through them yet, but I trust your opinion more than mine.




boy

Already, on page 6, I'm having doubts about how well Christopher will do.

His super-duper, accelerated Phase 4 Math Class has ZERO word problems.

I'll see if he can do this problem tonight, but I'd put money on it that he can't. And he's just finished the chapter on fractions. We're going to have to get back to the bar models big-time.

Obviously I'm going to have to print out these tests, and start seeing to it he can do the problems.

This is just great.

Now I'm going to be teaching to the test.


NYStategr6math.jpg


This is the kind of problem bar models were invented to solve.



update: Christopher can do this problem

He did it in no time flat. I was shocked. Ed said he could do it, and he was right. Ed remembers the two of us working on these problems in Saxon Math.

In fact, he remembers us working on these problems a lot.

I must have been in a trance at the time (a math trance!) because I have no recollection of teaching Christopher how to do such problems.

Have I mentioned that cortisol is bad for your memory?

Well, it is.

Cortisol is a stress hormone, and I've been pumping out a lot of stress hormones ever since I discovered that:

a) Christopher was flunking 4th grade math

b) U.S. students are 1 to 2 years behind their peers in high-achieving countries

c) the only children in Irvington who are on grade level with their peers in high-achieving countries are the so-called gifted children in Phase 4 Math

d) Irvington was adopting TRAILBLAZERS



update: what Singapore children can do at the end of 6th grade

Here's the placement test (not a pdf file) for New Elementary Mathematics 1, which is the 7th grade book in the 'Singapore Math' series. [note: If these links are bad, go to singaporemath.com and search for placement tests and New Elementary Math.]

Here's a fun question:

NewElementaryplacement2.jpg


I always loved this kind of thing.

And—I can still solve one. (At least, I can still solve one if, while copying the problem onto a nice, crisp, clean, brand-new piece of scratch paper, I write '1/12' as '1/12,' not '1/2.')

That's good news, especially seeing as how I have never in my life attempted to solve—or been taught to solve—a problem like this one:

NewElementaryplacement3.jpg

a) A hole with a diameter of 3.5 cm is drilled through a square metal nut of thickness 4 cm and length 6 cm. What is the mass of this nut if the density of the metal is 6 g/cm3? (Take pi = 22/7)

b) What is the surface area?



word problems Singapore children can do at the end of 7th grade

3. The HCF (highest common factor) and LCM (lowest common multiple) of 2 numbers are 8 and 408 respectively. If one of the numbers is 24, find the other number.

4. 6 men, working together, can finish a job in 2 h 20 min. If 3 men leave after one hour, how long will it take the remaining men to complete the job?

5. John spent $4 less than 60% of his money on a book and $3 more than 75% of his remaining money on another book. He still has $2 left. What percentage of his original money did he spend?

8. How many liters of 60% acid solution must be mixed with a 75% acid solution to get 20 liters of a 72% solution?

9. A man bought 450 books for $1,350. He sold half of them at a profit of 20%, 150 of them at a profit of 10%, and the rest at a loss of 4%. What was his gain percent, to the nearest percent?

13. A man has just enough money to buy 60 apples or 40 oranges. If he wants to buy an equal number of apples and oranges, how many of each type can he buy with the money?

16. Water flows at 4.5 m per second through a pipe. The water is collected in an empty cylindrical tank of an internal diameter 10 times the internal diameter of the pipe. Find the height of the water after 2 minutes.



word problems some New York state children can do at the end of 7th grade

26. On Friday and Saturday, there were a total of 200 cars in the parking lot of a movie theater. On Friday, 120 cars were in the parking lot.

Part A

What percent of the total number of cars were in the parking lot on Friday?

Show your work.


Part B

What percent of the total number of cars were in the parking lot on Saturday?

Show your work.



28. Mr. Roberts asked his students to solve the three equations below.

784 ÷ 2 =       125 x 6 =       14 x 28 = 

Which equations have the same solution?

Show your work.



31. Simplify the expression below.

6 x 4 ÷ 2 + 33

Show your work.



NYStategr6fraction.jpg



NY State Grade 6 multiple choice questions

NYStategr6zero.jpg



NYStategr6exponent.jpg



NYStategr6gallon.jpg



forget I asked

I obviously didn't need a professional opinion on the level of math achievement being tested here.

I wonder how many New York state kids score 3s and 4s? I'll see if I can track that information down quickly.

I'm going to give Christopher both of these tests, and see where we are now.




comments...


PretendAlgebraInMaryland 22 Dec 2005 - 19:37 CatherineJohnson

from Jerome Dancis's website:

Nice Problem A tube of tooth paste costs 90 cents to make, and sells for $2.50. The company has "fixed costs" (machinery or rent or whatever). of $3000. How many tubes of toothpaste does the company need to sell to cover/balance-out the fixed costs?

The profit on the sale of each tube is $2.50 - 0.90 = $1.60. Hence, the company will need to sell 3000/1.60 = 1875 tubes. (O.K. to use a calculator for the division only.)

This Nice Problem was not on the sample MD Algebra test; — well not until all the conceptual understandings, and problem solving had been removed and after it had been rewritten in a long-winded and pretentious manner. ( I suggest that you read the first paragraph of the problem, then jump to the Pedagogical Analysis, below.):




Marylandalgebra.jpg

Problem #32


A Pedagogical Analysis of Problem #32

A crucial part of problem solving is "setting-up" the equations for a "word problem". Also know as "modeling and interpreting real-world situations". This problem does not test this skill because the equations are provided. In sharp contrast, read the mis-claimed stated-expectation for this problem, on the state's website.:

Expectation 1.2: "The student will model and interpret real-world situations, using the language of mathematics and appropriate technology."

(Click, on view Core Learning Goal, Expectation and Indicator this item tested)

In fact, I counted only one of the 49 problems on the sample MD Algebra test, which actually required the student to set up the equations.

Solving simple equations both by hand and with a graphing calculator, is an important part of real Algebra. Here the equation 2.5x = 0.9x + 3000 needs to be solved. But the students do not need to do the simple calculations; they are encouraged to use their graphing calculators (which provide graphs of the functions). In fact, I counted only two problems on the sample MD Algebra test, which required students to solve equations, none, which required students to solve equations without a graphing calculators.

Here, the thinking part was reduced to choosing the correct "window" to view on the graphing calculator. Even that was deemed too hard as suggested "window" ranges are supplied.

Economists use q for quantity and c for cost. Never the cryptic x for quantity and y for cost as in this problem. A needed skill, in setting up a problem, is to choose names of variables that assist in understanding the problem and the equations. But then graphing c = 0.9q + 3000 on a graphing calculator requires some conceptual understanding unlike y = 0.9x + 3000 which does not.




Another solution, which received the highest possible score when graded....Here the student typed the two given equations into the calculator and had the calculator list their table of values. The student then "scolled through the table until [the numbers for both Y's] were the same." Precious little [Grade 6] conceptual understanding and problem solving involved.

This avoidance of conceptual understandings, and problem solving is in sharp contrast to the Maryland State Dept. of Education statement:

"In all mathematics content standards, the emphasis is on achieving a balance among memorization of facts, proficiency with paper and pencil skills, appropriate use of technology, conceptual understandings, and problem solving" (Underline added). On the web at here.

A big No-No in real Algebra is never using the same variable to mean two different things in the same problem. This problem violates this rule, having y representing both "income" and "cost". This type of ambiguity often confuses students. This suggests a problem writer, with little understanding of the very basic algebraic concept of "variables" (the x's and y's) in algebra. Of course, problem writers, who actually understand Algebra would require more pay for each problem. This would reduce the profits of the profit-making, test-writing company.

The following was added to the webpage for this problem between June 2001 and March, 2002 (I informed them of this and all the errors listed above on Oct. 30, 2001):

"The variable y is used to represent both the income for selling x tubes of toothpaste and the production cost for x tubes of toothpaste. This is an error in the use of a variable."




The first version of this problem was easy.

The second version was utterly mystifying, not least because X and Y were used to represent different values.

Worse yet, I have no clue what goes on with these graphing calculator thingies.

I'm going to have to take a whole course just on calculators.

I guess I can do that while I'm teaching to the test.




comments...


PrenticeHallPreAlgebraWorkBackwards 22 Dec 2005 - 20:47 CatherineJohnson


Now that the Mrs. Roth chapter is closed (knock on wood) it's time to face the fact that my patience with the math teacher is wearing thin.



grievance inventory

1. Christopher is not learning math. His grades have dropped steadily from B to C to D. This skid to the bottom prompted not the slightest glimmer of interest in Ms. Kahl until the principal learned she hadn't been in touch, at which point she was, immediately, in touch. Last week I received an email from her suggesting that possibly Christopher had had 'a bad day' when he took the test on Chapter 3 (grade: D+).

Yes, I think it's a safe bet Christopher had a bad day the day he took the Chapter 3 test. Also another bad day the day he took the Chapter 2 test. Plus a lot of bad days in between.

I emailed back requesting a conference, and that was that. No word since.

2. Christopher is not learning math, part 2. No word problems; precious little practice & no practice to mastery ever; math shortcuts taught without reference to the principles that make them possible.

3. Christopher is not learning math, part 3. Homework is not graded. Problems are not corrected.

4. Christopher is not learning math, part 4. Homework is not graded, problems are not corrected, and parents are not informed. Christopher came home with a computer print-out of every grade he's earned to date, and it turns out he has zeroes on 3 homework assignments because he didn't hand them in. I had no idea. He did the assignments; apparently he left them at home or in his locker or lord knows where.

Did the teacher tell us?

No.

Did the teacher ask him to find and/or do the homework and turn it in late so she could make sure he'd mastered the concepts being practiced?

No.

She gave him a 0 and entered it on Edline.

Of course, it could be worse, and I'm sure it will be. Ed talked to a dad on the train who said his son completely stopped doing math homework for six weeks without their realizing it. They never heard boo from the teacher.






So here's yesterday's lesson:


WorkBackwardsP-Hsm.jpg

Math books these days are obsessed with working backwards. (Does this come from Polya? Probably. I'm sure Work Backwards is more elegant in the Polya rendering.)

It's taken me quite awhile to figure out that 'Work Backwards' means you have the 'final' answer and you're trying to find the 'starting' number.

It's taken me quite awhile to figure this out because, to me, the 'starting' number is the final answer. To me, the unknown is the answer, no matter where it happens to be located in, umm, the narrative scheme of the word problem.

But maybe I'm missing something. Maybe this is a useful idea when PEOPLE WHO AREN'T THE AUTHORS OF PRENTICE HALL PRE-ALGEBRA write about it.

One last thing. Ms. Kahl doesn't use the textbook. She has the kids keep the book at home, and she assigns them problems to do. She never assigns pages to read or study.

I have no idea what she does in class. She appears to lecture a fair amount (again, I could be wrong); whether or not she pulls her lectures from the book, I don't know.



Work Backwards homework

So here are the 3 problems Ms. Kahl assigned for last night's homework.

I've mentioned that she does not assign word problems.

These are word problems.

They are the wrong word problems.


WRITTEN EXERCISES

Solve each problem by working backwards.

1. Solve this riddle: "I think of a number, add 5, multiply by 3, divide by 4, and subtract 1. The answer is 8." What is the original number?

2. Carla spent 1/3 of her money at the amusement park. Afterward, she had $15 left. How much money did she have originally?

3. A ball is bouncing on the floor. After each bounce, the ball is 2/3 as high as the previous bounce. On the fifth bounce, the ball is 2 ft off the floor. How high was the ball before the first bounce?




what's wrong with these problems?

clarity update: there's nothing wrong with these problems apart from the fact that Christopher has no clue how to do them

1. Christopher has no idea why these problems illustrate the concept of 'working backwards.' None. They were shown nothing in class that remotely resembled these particular problems. 'Work backwards' is just another mystifying Thing To Commit To Memory.

2. If you did try to work the first one backwards, with the skills you've gained from elementary mathematics, you'd be wrong. I looked at 1. and figured this was an inverse operation problem.....ding! ding! ding! Wrong. You can't start with the 8, then add 1, multiply by 4, and so on. [ed: yes you can ] At this point the kids have done a zillion inverse operation problems, and that knowledge, which may actually approach the state of mastery, and which would constitute genuinely 'working backwards,' is the wrong knowledge.

Thanks, guys.

Christopher got the answer to this problem right. He picked a number, plugged it in; then picked another number and plugged that one in when the first number didn't work.

So we're doing Guess and Check in the Work Backwards lesson.

Last but not least, Christopher probably does have the skills & knowledge it takes to set this up as an equation to solve.

It didn't occur to him to do that, because he's never seen anything this complex, and his teacher didn't suggest such a thing.

3. Problem number 2 would be excellent if, again, Christopher had received a shred of instruction on how to set it up and solve it. He hasn't. The kids are doing their Death March Through Fractions, and not one word problem of any kind has been assigned, IIRC. This is the first.

His answer was 45.

4. The bouncing ball. Appalling. Christopher came up with an answer of 3 feet-something for the original height. I have no idea how he did that, and neither does he.

I did the problem using, yes, bar models, more as a memory aide than anything else.

I walked Christopher through my approach & why it worked, but he was following dimly at best.

This is an interesting problem, but it's miles over the kids' heads, and they've been taught nothing about how one might approach such a question. Morever, to start with fraction problems in work backwards is nuts. If the problem had been only about the last 2 bounces, then maybe.

They have no idea how to isolate the variable. (Well, maybe they do; I think they may have 'covered' it in Chapter One. I'll check. Whether they covered isolating the variable or not, Chapter One is long gone.) Since they have no current idea how to isolate the variable, they're stuck. They're not going to see that they could solve this problem by setting it up this way: 2 ÷ 2/3 = height of previous bounce.

The only way Christopher would be able to set this up is: 2/3 x height of previous bounce = 3. I set it up this way, and he seemed to understand why immediately, but he had no clue how to solve this equation. He hasn't been taught.

5. huge opportunity costs. We spent at least half an hour on these 3 problems last night, maybe more. Then we were out of time. Christopher didn't get finished with his KUMON sheets; he wasn't able to fit in any of the extra fraction practice he desperately needs; I couldn't assign him some word problems he could grasp and do on his own, using actual math. Instead, he guessed 3 answers, one of which was for a problem so difficult he couldn't even do the 'check' part of 'Guess and Check.'

Ed told me, over dinner, that from now on I should send homework assignments like this one back with the notation 'Has not been taught skills necessary to interpret and solve this problem' but I'm stuck here, because we need all the Homework Points we can get.

I told Ed his job is to fire off an email to Ms. Kahl telling her these problems are inappropriate for the Chapter 5 test.

6. I presume the kids were taught how to do a Work Backwards problem involving travel & scheduled arrival times.

Where is that problem?

Why weren't they assigned problems related to the problem actually demonstrated in class?

I've had it.



one more thing

I'm officially done apologizing for Christopher's lack of TAGness.

There are, at most, two mathematically gifted children in the class, out of 17 kids. The rest are high-achievers like Christopher.

This is not a TAG class.

It is a high-achiever class.

It is a high-achiever class with kids whose parents are teaching them math at home.

Christopher needs to be taught math. Then, after he has been taught math, he needs to be given sufficient practice to master the math he has been taught. After he's done his practice problems, the teacher needs to assess whether in fact mastery has been achieved. That's her job.

I am now going to Live in Reality, and I am going to insist that the School live in reality, too.

I just have to figure out how.



update from Doug

I don't see why you can't run question #1 backwards:

8 + 1 = 9

9 * 4 = 36

36 ÷ 3 = 12

12 - 5 = 7


I messed up on the last digit. Sigh. (I added 5 to 12, instead of subtracting.)

I have a ways to go. A long ways.

(Specifically, I kept thinking I was violating the order of operations....I was thinking that when I added one, I was somehow subverting the elaborate division problem I'd set up.....Of course, I didn't think that until I'd gotten the answer wrong. Then I assumed I didn't understand the problem, instead of first looking to see if I'd make a smaller mistake.)

Thanks, Doug!



update, from Tracy—


Draw a diagram of the heights of the bouncing ball and number the bounces

           
           |    
           |  |  
           |  |  | 
           |  |  |  |
           |  |  |  |  |
           |  |  |  |  |  |
No. bounce 0  1  2  3  4  5

(Please note the lines are not to scale.)

To start, we know the height at bounce #5 is 2 ft.

            
           |  
           |  |  
           |  |  | 
           |  |  |  |
           |  |  |  |  |  2 ft
           |  |  |  |  |  |
No. bounce 0  1  2  3  4  5

And we know that the fifth bounce is 2/3 of the height of the fourth bounce. We can reverse that, and determine that the fourth bounce is 3/2 of the fifth bounce, or 3 ft.

           
           |  
           |  |  
           |  |  | 
           |  |  |  |  3 ft
           |  |  |  |  |  2 ft
           |  |  |  |  |  |
No. bounce 0  1  2  3  4  5


And from here we can work out that the third bounce is 3/2 x the fourth bounce, and so forth backwards.

         
          15 3/16 ft 
           |  10 1/8 ft 
           |  |  6 3/4 ft
           |  |  | 4 1/2 ft 
           |  |  |  |  3ft
           |  |  |  |  |  2 ft
           |  |  |  |  |  |
No. bounce 0  1  2  3  4  5



I love this!

This is the way I solved the problem, too, BUT I drew my standard Singapore Math bar models, which are horizontal rectangles.

Needless to say, in Christopher's mind, a set of horizontal rectangles didn't instantly translate to 'bouncing ball.' (And in fact the bar models were an obstacle for me, too. I had to keep 'translating' horizontal-bar-model to ball-bouncing-up-and-down.)

I'm going to try this with Christopher, and see if he gets the concept and the procedures.

Thanks!


grievance inventory short





comments...


HomeschoolCurriculumForAProdigy 23 Dec 2005 - 04:31 CarolynJohnston

Here's a letter that LoneRanger found on another list and posted on our requests page. It's an interesting story about a homeschool mom with a brainy kid who sort of rolled her own math curriculum. My advice would be "don't try this at home". I don't really like the bit about 'real math not being sequential little increments' and 'the usual order is arbitrary pedagogy', either; it's a mistake to try to make broad sweeping generalizations from your experience with a single child.

But with those caveats, it's kind of interesting to see what she did.

My son is now 19 and a freshman at MIT majoring in math and computer science. He is extremely talented at math. He has never been to school. We've never worried about doing anything sequentially. I've always used the Tetris model of homeschooling with the random pieces falling from the sky, never the traditional beads-on-a-string approach. Here's what we did for math. It might not work for less-mathy kids, but it sure worked for us. It is sort of like learning a foreign language by moving to the country and having to survive, rather than learning a foreign language by studying 10 new vocabulary words a day and introducing 2 verb tenses per semester. I think S would have done much less if we had insisted on a sequential approach. "Real math" is not sequential little increments. "The usual order" is something totally arbitrary that pedagogues came up with.

Elementary PK-5
I used to say we had a "game-based curriculum". We played a lot of dice, card and board games that involved math. Get "Games for Math" by Peggy Kaye for ideas. We owned every math computer game on the market back then. The best ones are the ones where you need to use math to play the game. I avoided the ones where you are drilled for a few problems, and then "rewarded" by shooting a few spaceships or something. We talked a lot about mathy stuff in the car or waiting for food in restaurants. There was no agenda to it. We would just talk about anything off the top of my head to keep him entertained. We did not use a traditional math textbook with formal homework assignments until 9th grade, when he did AP calculus. But we used a lot of children's math books from the library ("Number Devil", "Al Gebra", etc). I also had all of those "What Your Nth Grader Should Know" books, and I went thru the math sections like a check list to make sure he had all of it. We bought all the Doug Downing "Easy Way" books (algebra, trig, calculus) and I read them to him like story books. Whenever he got bogged down in the explanations, I just skipped ahead to where the story picked up. A year or 2 later I would go through it again, with the explanations, a year or two after that we would make the final pass and include all the footnotes and end-of chapter problems. These all overlapped. We did the first pass on the algebra one in 3th grade, and the first pass on the trig and calc ones in 4th grade. We did all the teaching company videos. But I never asked him to do any problems with them. He would just watch them. Also the old Square One on PBS. He never memorized the multiplication tables (neither did I). I taught him the little tricks I figured out as a kid to compute them on the spot, and he invented some new ones. The tricks involve a much higher level of mathematical understanding than memorizing the table, plus they also work for bigger numbers than 12X12.

Middle School 6-8
At the beginning of 6th grade we discovered Mathcounts, and our lives changed. The math was an exact match for him. The problems are extremely challenging, varied, interesting, and combine multiple areas of math in one problem. They sometimes require stuff like combinatorics and number theory that I didn't see into college. Competition math is totally non-sequential. When newcomers start on Mathcounts, they just jump in the stream wherever everyone else is working. At first they can't do it. It takes about 100 problems of a solution book or person walking them through how to do it before they start to get the hang of it. Then, the first years can maybe get 20% of the problems. The second year, the problems don't get any harder, but the kids are better at it. Maybe they can get 50%. Third year maybe 70%. There is a tremendous amount of preparation material out there for contests. We have a huge supply of problem books with solutions, for contests at various levels. S learned by doing problems, with all the math mixed together.

High School Camp
- the summer after 8th grade S started attending USA-Canada Mathcamp. 5 weeks of math-nerd paradise! A huge smorgasbord of offerings at all levels. Kids pick and choose what they feel like doing every day. Some classes are one-lecture long, others might be 2 weeks, or the entire 5 weeks long. Topology, Field Theory, Optics, Problem Solving, Cryptography. A total mish-mash of subjects that the staff is interested in (often has Ph.D.s in) and makes available to the kids. It is totally non-linear. No pre-reqs, homework sets, exams, grades. The kids just jump in it and play around. Everyone is thrilled to be there and looks forward to it all year. 9th Grade - S had already had 3 passes thru Calculus the Easy Way spread over 5 years, plus watched some calculus videos. I got a bunch of AP review books and old AP problems. He worked through those, then took the AP Calculus BC exam at the end of 9th grade. I bought a calculus textbook, but he never used it. 10th grade - he did distance learning courses for Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra. This was his first experience actually working through a math textbook and dealing with homework sets and exams. He HATED that aspect of it (too much drill-and-kill even at this level). I had to force him to sit down and do it while he bitched bitterly, particularly on the multivariable which didn't involve as much new material as we had assumed. But he got through, and made As. He also read an AP Statistics review book and took the AP exam. 11th grade - started auditing grad level math courses at UT (Abstract Algebra, Algebraic Topology). 12th grade - Audited 4 grad courses. Because of conflicts with college visits, he was able to do varying amounts of the work, including attending. But he got something significant out of each of them. Also self studied differential equations using lectures and materials from MIT's OpenCourseWare site (free).

College Applications
We ended up with 10 AP scores (all self-study), 4 scores on SAT II subject tests (in addition to the regular SAT I scores), 3 grades from UT distance learning courses, 2 letters from UT profs stating what his grade would have been in their grad course if he had been allowed to register. I put everything together on one big master transcript. I included the things he studied at home, sort of arbitrarily bundled into "courses". I did not include any parent assigned grades. The transcript is 2 pages. There is an additional 5 page document with course descriptions (textbooks used, etc. Max few lines per course). There is also a one-page "school profile" describing our general educational philosophy. It makes it clear that we were homeschooling in order to attain the highest possible level of academic success, not for any religious reason. It also makes clear that the student had plenty of opportunity for social interactions. We got a rec letter from one of his math profs at UT, from one of the coaches of the USA Computing Olympiad, and from a homeschool parent who taught several classes that included my son. He also had an extensive list of national and some international awards in math, physics, computer science.

At MIT
We had a transcript and copy of the syllabus for the two UT distance learning courses he took, but he did not get automatic credit for any of the college level math he had done other than AP calculus. He was able to get credit for multivariable calculus by taking an MIT exam during freshman orientation. He expects to get credit for differential equations the same way, but they require kids to submit a semester's worth of homework assignments before they allowed to take the exam, so he hasn't gotten around to it yet. There are other courses that he has covered and could almost certainly get credit for by taking MIT's exam (linear algebra, topology). But he has decided not to bother since they are not required for the particular math major he is going for, and he expects to have plenty of credits. MIT is fairly loose about prereqs, so he won't have to repeat anything he has already covered.



comments...


BrendaMOnMathTexts 23 Dec 2005 - 17:07 CatherineJohnson


I hated textbooks like this when I was in school.

"Read, Plan, Solve, Look Back." I'm busy learning algorithms, and the stupid book wants me to memorize this sequence logo thing? Gee, let's make everything easier by adding the number of things you need to remember.

"Read." Well, DUH!

"Plan." It's just like Solve, but you use words instead of symbols, and you don't actually do anything. Did they really need this? They could have made a triangle logo thingy instead of a circle.

"Solve." Double DUH!

"Look Back." In the real world, we call this Check Your Work, Doofus.




My thoughts exactly.



International Red Cross Symbol for Guess and Check

Guessandcheck.jpg





comments...


KenOnSingaporeMathInAbington 23 Dec 2005 - 17:27 CatherineJohnson


from Ken—


Speaking of Singapore Math ...

The Singaporeans are in town being corrupted by our local educators. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Get your daubers out.

Students in Singapore had the top scores among 25 countries in an international math and science test. But their educators think they still have something to learn from the United States.

Giggle.

Two principals from Singapore and a representative of its education agency recently visited schools in Abington, hoping to see American students' creativity and communication skills in action.

Double Giggle.

The Singapore educators attribute their students' success in math and science to their city-state's highly structured form of instruction. But they suspect that structure keeps some students from asking questions and limits opportunity for independent learning and thinking.

[snip]

"I like the way your children are able to communicate," she said. "Maybe we need to cultivate that more - a conversation between students and teachers."

Hmmm, maybe they are on to something with their lack of critical thinking skills. [The superiority only applies to math IQ, not verbal IQ, as this article clearly demonstrates.] *

Chia, Pei Hwa Secondary School principal Hoi Neng Chong, and Mark Nivan Singh, of Singapore's Ministry of Education, came to Philadelphia for a training conference. While they were here, they wanted to see U.S. classrooms, and Chia's online research left her impressed with Abington, which has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a high-achieving district.

Abington, eh. Let's see:

Median Household Income 101,951
Adults with a Bachelor's Degree 25.2%

Not exactly a typical school district. High Income, slightly above average parental education.

"We have a lot to learn from you guys about social and emotional learning," Singh said.

Oooookaay. Fair enough. And, we have a lot to learn from you about, you know, teaching math.

The group visited a Spanish class with about 25 students. Chia, the primary school principal, asked whether the class size was typical. When told yes, she smiled and said, "We have 40 in a class back home."

Small Classrooms, Reason for Success: Uncheck.

For Breana Brown, 14, one of three student guides, the walks between class visits gave her a chance to ask questions about student life in Singapore. Most students there use public transportation or walk to school, she learned. Public schools don't offer kindergarten. The school day has only one half-hour break for lunch. At 11th grade, some students go to a junior college-like academic program. Others go to high-level technical study.

Very Interesting. Here comes the good part, get the daubers ready.

American researchers have been visiting Singapore and other Asian countries, too, said Patrick Gonzales, a U.S. Department of Education research analyst who coordinates the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS. That's the test in which Singapore's fourth graders scored higher in math and science than students in 25 participating countries. Singapore scored first with an average of 594; the United States was 12th with an average of 518. Eighth graders in Singapore also outperformed students in 45 countries.

"There's a growing interest in the U.S. in what is termed 'Singapore Math,'" Gonzales said. "It has been published in the U.S., and school districts are beginning to use it."

But the tricky part in all of this, he said, is that Singapore's top scores are in line with other Asian countries even though they teach math differently.

"Some are very traditional, teacher-centered, with rote memorization and lots of practice," he said.

Thanks Mr. Gonzales, I hadn't realized that the reason for Singapore's success was because they have a fuzzy curriculum.

"In other, more inquiry-based models, students take more responsibility for their learning and there is more independent learning."

I wonder if he was able to keep a straight face when he said this, especially the "there is more independent learning" part. For those of you playing along at home, you should have BINGO by now, but we're going for blackout at KTM.

Researchers are now paying close attention to one characteristic that is shared by many Asian countries: a focus on teaching students the concepts behind their math lessons.

But wait, the TIMMS guy, just called it rote memorization a few paragraphs up. Circuits overloading.

The people who run TIMSS have begun sending video cameras into classrooms to record how teachers around the world teach, Gonzales said.

In the United States, they have noticed, math and science are largely taught in isolation, without stressing the underlying concepts that allow connections between lessons within the same subject. "The lessons are being taught as discrete units," he said.

White is black. Black is White. Yes, that's our problem -- not enough "stressing the underlying concepts" at the expensive of learning to mastery.

The solution: more fuzziness. The usual.

Students in other countries also get more advanced lessons at a younger age, he said.

In the United States, there is growing support to have all students take algebra by grade eight, Gonzales noted.

"In Hong Kong, 14 percent of students in grade eight are taking trigonometry," he said.

And, the reason why they're getting more advanced lessons? Could it be because they're not wasting an inordinate amount of time on "inquiry learning"? And ...

Gonzales said that U.S. students may not be advancing in math as quickly because much more time is spent on review.

"It's harder to get to more advanced topics because we are also going back and dealing with more elementary topics that, at eighth grade, students should be beyond," he said.

But I thought Inquiry learning was so great. Are you now telling me that students aren't learning and teachers have to constantly review old topics, yet still by 8th grade kids aren't getting it. Wait a second, there's a name for this nonsense -- the spiral curriculum -- and it's supposed to be a feature not a bug. I'm really confused now.

Another issue is homework.

The videotaped lessons revealed that in the United States, students are frequently allowed to spend the last 10 minutes of class time on homework.

Chia said her elementary students have at least an hour of homework each night.

Of course when US students do get homework, it sometimes looks like this.

F. Joseph Merlino, project director of the Mathematics Science Partnership of Greater Philadelphia, ...

And well-known shill for the fuzzy math program IMP.

... said the United States' competitive edge has always come from creativity. But the most rigorous classes and best teaching that foster creativity have often been enjoyed by a small group of high achievers. That's no longer enough to stay competitive.

"We're not teaching kids to think for themselves in sufficient numbers," he said.

You should have a blackout by now.

The visiting Singapore educators said parental pressure is part of the reason why their students excel at math and science.

Parents see accomplishment in math and science as the way to success, they said. They pressure schools to offer challenging courses and pressure students to do well in them.

I did learn something afterall. Singaporean parents are smarter than American parents.




* That's what I've been thinking. Where's the vaunted 1-standard-deviation IQ superiority we've been hearing about when you need it?




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StudioCity 23 Dec 2005 - 17:49 CatherineJohnson




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An early Merry Christmas / Happy Chanukah / Happy Holidays to everyone—


(If I manage to get a family picture taken this year, I'll post that one.)




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KTMGrowingPains 24 Dec 2005 - 01:52 CarolynJohnston

If you had problems leaving comments a couple of hours ago, it was because we exceeded our disk quota at Hostingmatters (our gracious and responsive webhosting service)... which I had just topped up (for the same reason) last month. So I have topped up our disk quota again, and things are back to functioning normally.

However — as time goes on, and I keep adding more (and paying for more) disk space, I'm wondering more and more about how to handle our growth. Kitchentablemath is growing at least geometrically — maybe exponentially — it's hard to tell because we are kind of new. Right now there's nothing prohibitive about the cost of running KTM, but if KTM continues to grow at its present rate, that might change.

Kitchentablemath grows for two reasons — one is that we post a lot (heaven knows), and people comment and create user pages a lot; our posts, comments and user pages, though, don't take up much space.

The other reason is that users can upload attachments. I've just done a study of the sorts of files we upload — they are mostly jpgs, pdfs, and some MS word documents. The biggest files are the pdfs, it turns out; if you're not careful when you make them, they can end up as large as 400 KB — a half a megabyte.

For now, I've just placed a limit on uploads of 100 KB - this will admit most jpgs and docs, but we'll have to take more care with pdf files.



Growing KTM

Possibilities for supporting KTM's growth include doing google ads — we could, I suppose, but I'm a little reluctant (I don't know about Catherine) — or taking donations, which I am also reluctant to do.

But here's another thought. I am wondering whether anyone knows of any foundations for improvement in education that might be willing to support an online forum like KTM. I'm a grant proposal writer from way back and would be willing to lead the charge for funding if I knew of a potential source.

And besides, grants got fuzzy math to where it is today. Surely they can do something for the rest of us as well.

Any other ideas I haven't thought of? — please pass them on.

comments...


CoffeeAtCaffeSole 24 Dec 2005 - 04:51 CarolynJohnston

One thing about being frustrated with your job; any day you have off is almost automatically a good day, and this was a good day.

This morning I had coffee with Greta Frohbieter, a KTM visitor who, until recently, taught math at one of our district's charter schools; we met at a local coffee shop not far from my son's middle school (if you look at the second picture on the coffee shop's website, imagine us sitting in that room -- but the paintings in that photo are long gone). Greta is working on a Master's (and perhaps a Ph.D.) in curricular studies at CU in the school of education; when she met me, she had a copy of Parker and Baldridge in hand in case I hadn't seen it, and another book I actually hadn't seen (The Man Who Counted, by Malba Tahan).

What a good time! It's rare that I get the chance to talk in the flesh with someone who is as interested in this stuff as I am! We yakked nonstop for perhaps an hour and a half.

Greta's undergraduate degree is in civil engineering, and she has worked in the aerospace industry, so she is someone who has really used math. Although we never talked about this explicitly, I imagine she left her aerospace job because she loved teaching math and wanted to go back into it; now she is drawn to teaching teachers about mathematics (an idea that appeals to me as well; but unlike me, Greta has the courage of her convictions and is actually studying to do this). In her experience, teachers of elementary school math are eager to learn more mathematics so they can teach kids more effectively; not resistant, as one might fear. Greta was excited by the TeachingMathToTeachers post -- discussing the idea that what's required in order to have racial equity in performance on mathematics standards (which is an important issue in schools of education these days) is to have elementary school teachers who know more math.

Greta and I agreed that mathematical weakness in kids -- whether it's procedural weakness (which she has seen in many students over the years) or conceptual weakness -- follows from a lack of access to adults who can teach math. It's just as Catherine said in the post I mentioned above -- if we are to assume that any child can learn math, then surely any teacher should also be able to learn math. Surely a good way to enable kids to learn math is to empower their teachers with knowledge of the mathematics they need to teach.

Greta also gave me some advice on pre-algebar and beginning algebra texts, which I've been sorely wanting. Ben is doing pre-algebra this year -- next year, he'll need a pre-algebra/beginning algebra text. Most of the books that Greta recommended to me are from the 70s; from a time before math texts were full of colorful graphic distractors. She had good things to say about the Smith, Brown, and Dolciani algebra text, and about Paul Foerster's Algebra 1 text (which also received a high rating at Mathematically Correct). She recommended a Holt pre-algebra textbook from the 1970s ("it had a space shuttle on the cover," she said, "you know the one?" ... I didn't.. does anyone else?).

You know, I just went looking for a place where I could buy the Dolciani text -- is that as hard a book to find as it appears to be?



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RussianMathProblem624 24 Dec 2005 - 14:29 CatherineJohnson


One think I love about Russian Math is that problems are numbered sequentially from beginning to end. The authors don't start over again from 1 with each chapter. This means you've left the realm of the friendly numbers by page 22. (First problem on page 23: #102.)

300 pages
1118 problems

A lot of those 1118 problems include as many as 9 to 12 separate problems. I figure there are at least 10,000 problems in the book, every one of which I've done. (And I still didn't get the answer to Carla and her 1/3 money expenditure at the amusement park. Is that a diagnostic?)

All math books should do this.

The sense of progress you feel working your way through the book is tremendous.

Plus you get a lot of practice doing percent problems, as in: what percent of the book do I have left if I'm up to problem number 507?

Seriously.



what's the answer to this problem?

769. An old brainteaser by Leonty Magnitsky: If a man drinks a barrel of water by himself in 14 days and the same barrel with his wife in 10 days, how many days would it take his wife to drink the barrel by herself?



my next question

How do you check your answer?

I have an answer, but I've 'checked' it in what seems like a circular way.....that is, I've checked it in such a fashion that I've simply confirmed that I did my calculations correctly.



incorporating 'historic' story problems into contemporary texts

Another wonderful aspect of MATHEMATICS 6: scattered throughout the book are 'brainteasers' written long ago by 'Central Asian scholars' and the like. I perked up every time I came across one of these.

Mathematics 6 teaches students something about the history of mathematics—and, crucially, about the fact that mathematics has a history—through the problem sets, not through dorky 4-color sidebars that interrupt the text and bring progress to a screeching halt. (Mathematics 6 has no colors. The text and sparse illustrations are black and white. Good.)

This is living history. Working a problem somebody thought up in 973 that's still hard today, you feel yourself connected to people living nearly a thousand years ago. It's magic.

624. An old brainteaser by the Central Asian scholar Biruni (973—1048):
If 10 dirhams (a unit of currency) earn 5 dirhams of profit in two months, how much profit will 8 dirhams earn in 3 months?




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SomeBooksThatHaveChangedMyLife 25 Dec 2005 - 01:06 CarolynJohnston

Happy Christmas Eve -- here is a list of books that I have loved and used to the point where I can honestly say they've changed my life. Of course, I have had a weird life, and I have some unusual interests, so you can take this for what it's worth. I hope you find something on this list to enjoy.

1. News From The Border, by Jane McDonnell.

Out of the gazillions of autism books I've read, this one is my heartfelt favorite. If not for the boy in this book (Paul McDonnell), I would think that my son was a completely one-of-a-kind, never-before-seen sort of autism spectrum kid; socially interested, bright, depressive, obsessive, and destined to live uncomfortably in both his own world and ours. I pick up this book at intervals of years, and always discover that Paul and Ben have more in common now than they did the last time I checked. Paul and Jane felt very alone when Paul was young -- but thanks to them, Ben and I don't have to feel quite as alone.

2. Thinking in Pictures, by Temple Grandin.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and have reread it a few times, but this book is on the list of books that have changed my life because of only one thing in it, on one page.

At the age of 7, Ben was taking Zoloft; he was and is an SSRI-responder, a variety of autism spectrum kid in whom SSRIs (the class of drug that includes Zoloft, Paxil, and Prozac) have the pretty-much-instant effect of dramatically reducing autism symptoms. But SSRI-responders like Ben often are hypersensitive to SSRIs and easily become manic on them, a fact that isn't widely known even among psychiatrists (especially among MY psychiatrists).

At that time I didn't know it either, and Ben was slowly becoming more and more manic. Our psychiatrist was responding by raising his dose; he was on the verge of going over the edge -- was even becoming a bit violent. In desperation, I tried a new psychiatrist who was even worse.

Then one night, I reread 'Believer in Biochemistry', the chapter in Temple's book in which she mentions, offhand, that Dr. John Ratey had mentioned to her that many autistic people do better on microdoses of SSRI because their neurology is exquisitely sensitive to it. Microdoses.

I started Ben on a microdose of Paxil the next day. It saved his life; it saved my life. I have a lot to thank Temple Grandin for.

Interestingly -- here's Kismet in action -- both Temple and John Ratey are co-authors of Catherine's.

3. Getting Things Done, by David Allen.

I have a lousy memory and a severe attention deficit (two not unrelated things); also a slightly obsessive nature. The former leaves me prone to disorganization, missing appointments, etc.; the latter ensures that I never stop feeling guilty about it. I've read many books and tried many systems (7 Habits of highly effective people, etc.) for getting organized; nothing ever actually worked. I'd lost hope; and then I read David Allen's book and gave his method the college try.

Now, I'm functionally organized. No kidding; everyone thinks I'm organized. I know when to pay bills, I know how to keep track of all the tiny things and large things I have to do, and I actually do get them done. It's amazing. I always thought I was congenitally incapable of being organized, but I just didn't know how to be. Turns out that most people don't.

David Allen's book is a bag of powerful tricks that all work together to close the seams in your life. It's a bottom-up rather than top-down system. Whereas Stephen Covey asks you to consider what the really important things in your life are, David Allen asks you to get a huge pile of folders and a Brother labeler (he actually recommends the brand to use -- this is the kind of firm direction I need) and maintain lists by context and update them once a week. It works; things stop falling through the cracks.

4. The Right To Write, by Julia Cameron.

Catherine and I have been talking about this book lately. She's never read it; she always thought it sounded kind of dumb. Julia Cameron is essentially a cheerleader for 'artists in recovery' -- that is, the majority of us who have always wanted to paint or write or dance or sing but can't bring ourselves to take a risk and do it for whatever reason, usually because someone at some point in our lives told us we stunk.

She has exercises that you work through to help your recovery along. One of them is to write a letter to that person in the distant past who told you you stunk, or to draw a picture of her depicting her as the monster she is.

Sounds silly -- until you consider that both Catherine and I intuitively avoided taking any classes in writing and singing -- her biggest gift and mine, respectively. We were protecting ourselves. One art teacher of mine took such a dislike to me that she tucked a little note in my guidance counseling file telling future teachers who might encounter me that I was the least creative child she had ever encountered (it's worth noting that this opinion was unsolicited -- it wasn't associated with a report card, and I wouldn't have seen it if I weren't inquisitive about my guidance file).

It sounds silly, until you consider that some adults do sometimes bully kids.

These have a huge impact on kids, more powerful than the gentler encouraging words of most adults, and the impact often lasts into adulthood. In my case, Julia Cameron's book got me writing and painting again after a hiatus of many years. Cheerleading it is; but I needed it. She has a whole bunch of books, with titles such as "The Artist's Way" and "The Vein Of Gold", but this is the shortest (and to my mind, the most intelligent).

OK, I have to quit now; it's Christmas Eve, and the boys are all here. Time to celebrate. More later.

comments...


MerryChristmas2005 25 Dec 2005 - 03:15 CatherineJohnson


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I discovered Jacquie Lawson's "Chudleigh" cards a little over a year ago, and realized tonight they're just the thing.

Our own two dogs, unfortunately, are Bad, Evil dogs; Ed just came downstairs and discovered they've eaten ALL of our remaining brisket.

Which means we'll be eating peanut butter and jam for lunch tomorrow, BEFORE WE FLY TO LOS ANGELES!

We'll be gone for a week, back January 1.




When did Carolyn and I get going with Kitchen Table Math?

April?

I think it was!

I'm sure glad to have met you all — see you in the New Year!



Merry Christmas

Happy Chanukah

Happy Holidays

and

Happy New Year!




Afterword from Carolyn

Catherine's going to be gone until January 1st... I'm going with family to Texas and will be posting and checking in regularly -- but as everyone here knows, I'm the 'quiet one' and so things will be quieter here for a while.

We'll be back in full swing by January 1st.

In the meantime -- have a peaceful and relaxing holiday week!



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RudbeckiaHirtaDrawsTheBarrelProblem 25 Dec 2005 - 15:07 CatherineJohnson


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I find this lovely, so lovely I want to frame it in a simple light-wood frame and hang it on my wall.

I don't know why.

Somehow, images like these make me feel happy and wondering.

Thank you, Rudbeckia.

And Happy Holidays!




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EmailToTheSuperintendent 25 Dec 2005 - 15:37 CatherineJohnson


I know I said I wasn't going to post this until after the holidays.

I lied!

Seeing as how the District saw fit to barge into my Christmas Eve with its Interim Report, I decided Christmas day would be a fine time to send this:

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Dear Dr. Matusiak:

We received our son Christopher’s ‘Interim Report’ yesterday, Christmas Eve.

It was cold, clinical, anonymous, and gender-stereotyped. Using the canned comments with which our school district labels and pigeonholes children, Christopher’s teachers, who work together as a ‘team,’ spoke with one voice:

Capable of better work

Capable of better work

Effort is inconsistent

Needs to be more attentive

Unprepared


In short, Christopher is a generic boy not working up to capacity.

Dismissed.


We don’t live with a generic boy.

We live with an individual child who has a name. Christopher.

Christopher loves school. He wants to please his teachers. Every night he tells me what they said in class. He reads his school notes out loud to me. (But he ‘needs to be more attentive.’)

He thinks he’s doing a good job, although he senses that his teachers do not agree. He’s trying very hard, and he is chronically anxious now because he perceives that his teachers aren’t impressed. He doesn’t understand what he’s doing wrong, or why they are unhappy with him.

Every day now he says to me, ‘Mommy, I’m going to get bad grades.’

He still calls me ‘Mommy.’


Christopher was the Distinguished Student at Main Street School. His state test and TONYSs scores are 4s. He was a happy child who was thriving in school.

Now he’s frightened, and his grades are in free-fall. He’s learned little this semester. Only one of his teachers contacted us about the decline in his performance, and that teacher called to complain that Christopher had failed to hand in his ‘Grade Contract,’ another pre-fab list of failings Christopher was to confess to, sign, and hand in.

When I told this teacher that he would not be handing in a Grade Contract stating that, at age 11, he is fully responsible for his grades, she hung up the telephone.


We requested a team meeting some weeks ago. Nothing has happened.

We requested a parent conference with the math teacher. Nothing has happened.


And now, on Christmas eve, the school has sent us a computer generated form telling us that the problems our son is having at school are his fault.

He is Capable of better work.


We have a problem.

Catherine Johnson, Ph.D.




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TheGreatestJokeBookEver 25 Dec 2005 - 18:10 CatherineJohnson


Christopher was telling me, just yesterday, that 'Joke books never have funny jokes.'

Turns out he's wrong.

One of his Christmas presents is The Greatest Joke Book Ever by Mel Greene.

The GenderJokes are laugh-out-loud funny; we've been sitting around cracking up over dumb blondes and what men mean when they say things like, "I don't need to read the instructions." (answer: "I am perfectly capabgle of screwing it up without printed help.")

I'd quote the "Men's Grasp of English" section in full, but it's slightly too risque for a Family Blooki (not too risque for an 11-year old, but still...)

For some arcane reason, which would become crystal clear if I did quote "Men's Grasp of English" in full, "Women's Grasp of English" is far more appropriate. So here goes:

Yes = No

No = Yes

Maybe = No

I'm Sorry. = You'll be sorry.

We need. = I want.

It's your decision. = The correct decision should be obvious by now.

Do what you want. = You'll pay.

I'll be ready in a minute. = Kick off your shoes and find a good game on TV.

Was that the baby? = Get out of bed and walk him until he goes to sleep.

I'm not yelling! = Yes, I am yelling, because I think this is important.




oh, wait! I found some I can quote!

Men's Grasp of English, Condensed

What's wrong? = I don't see why you are making such a big deal out of this.

What's wrong? = What meaningless self-inflicted trauma are you going through now?

What's wrong? = I guess _ tonight is out of the question.

etc.




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CheckingIn 31 Dec 2005 - 17:26 CarolynJohnston

I just got back from my week in Texas, which was lovely (Catherine is due back, I think, today, tomorrow or Monday). I got to meet and play with my niece and nephew, who were so tiny the last time we saw them that they couldn't remember us. Now they are big-little kids, 7 and 5 respectively, learning to read and scootering with their big cousin Ben.

I actually got to play Barbies with my little niece. You may think I'm nuts, but in all my life of child-rearing I've never had a little girl to play Barbies with. I got her a Barbie for Christmas which she liked a lot; she got the dolls out and all her extensive collection of Barbie clothes and would hand me another Barbie and say, "Here. You're the OLD Barbie." (I'd say that's a no-brainer). Then we'd struggle for an hour with the little floozy Barbie-doll clothes (Barbies dress outrageously; if there were Barbie mother dolls, they would never let these girls out of the house dressed like that).

On Christmas Eve my oldest stepson said, "Sudoku is everywhere." I said, "What?" He said, "Sudoku, this Japanese puzzle thing". He was right. Sudoku was everywhere suddenly; the scales fell from my eyes and what was hidden was revealed. My mother in law, a Times crossword-puzzle doer from way back, was doing sudoku. My 7-year old niece had a sudoku puzzle book. All the men in my family got on line and went to this sudoku website and struggled with the harder problems for hours. I saw teenagers doing sudoku puzzles while they waited in the airport.

Sudoku is fun, but I have a warning message for anybody involved in elementary school mathematical programming:

Sudoku is not math.

In fact,

Sudoku is really not math.

Doing math and doing sudoku both exercise the logical parts of the brain, and so they may FEEL similar, but if your kid is doing sudoku in school he is not learning math, he is doing sudoku. Math is a body of knowledge and skills in arithmetic, word problem-solving (meaning translation of word problems into math problems), algebra, and geometry that needs to be explicitly taught.

I have not yet seen anyone using sudoku as a real part of their math program. I just have this feeling of foreboding.



comments...


SusanFindsASaxonMathFAQ 31 Dec 2005 - 17:50 CarolynJohnston

Here's a tremendously interesting link SusanS found. This is a Saxon Math FAQ written by a woman who has used Saxon math to teach kids for years, and who has strong opinions about which editions to get, how to place your child appropriately in the sequence, and how Saxon Publishers may be messing up by trying to include new-new-math tidbits in the offerings.

Another benefit -- she has opinions mainly about the later offerings of Saxon Math -- Saxon Math 7/6 through Physics.

I feel good about this lady, not just because she agrees with me about the value of Saxon, but because she feels EXACTLY the same way I do about stem-and-leaf plots (she thinks they are a Total Waste Of Time -- I actually think it's probably okay to spend a single day on them AT MOST, but in Everyday Math Ben was doing them literally for weeks). This is almost all I need to know about someone, frankly.

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