Comments

Interesting observation and good advice. I just purchased the Saxon Math 76 book for 6th grade, and I notice that many of the problems have a scale on the page (in inches, sometimes divided into 8ths, 16ths, etc depending on the problem), with a line above it and students are asked to give the length of the line. I thought it strange to have such measurement practice but now I don't.

-- BarryGarelick - 01 Jul 2005

Well, that's what happened to me.

I just sort of thought.....I don't know what I thought.

But obviously I did not give 'simple measurement' the attention I needed to give it.

(And I do remember Christopher getting those problems wrong while doing lessons....)

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Jul 2005

Actually, I got those problems wrong a couple of times!

I couldn't 'decode' the page; it wasn't making sense to me, and I thought a different question was being asked.

We might be getting into a 'perceptual' realm here as well....into some kind of 'do you recognize measurement problems in different forms' issue.

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Jul 2005

I've got to test Ben on this skill again. Thanks for the timely warning of possible trouble!

-- CarolynJohnston - 01 Jul 2005

Learning to read/measure from an 'inch' ruler has to be incremental. Younger students can't look at a ruler and automatically discern what all of those marks mean. They have to be taught to find the 'half' mark and measure using the 'half' marks. Then add the 'fourth' marks, (Don't be surprised that students don't automatically know that the 'half' mark also becomes a 'fourth' mark.) Then have students measure using the 'fouth' and half' marks. And so on, going into 'eighth' marks, etc. Practice between each incremental step.

Practice is necessary so students develop the skill of disregarding the smaller (16ths and 32nds) marks. For some students, with visual discrimination problems, this is horribly difficult.

Saxon 6/5 covers through 'fourths' and I add a little 'eighths' for more advanced students.

I was looking through Passport to Mathematics,Book 1, a text that I am previewing for personal reasons, and I see lots and lots of metric work, but little with feet and inches. On pg. 32, students measure to the nearest inch, and nothing else that I can see until pg. 318. With no review of 'half' and 'fourth' inches, it jumps to 'eights' -- there is one problem.

I'm glad to hear that Saxon 7/6 has some in it. This makes me sad that our school has dropped Saxon 7/6.

-- InterestedTeacher - 01 Jul 2005

Saxon 6/5 covers through 'fourths' and I add a little 'eighths' for more advanced students.

You know--I remember doing all those lessons now that you mention it.

Now I'm thinking maybe Christopher didn't generalize to real rulers?

I don't know what happened.

I'm sure I sloughed off some of the ruler & measurement lessons, but I wouldn't have sloughed off all of them--and he had a full math curriculum in school, too.

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Jul 2005

I was looking through Passport to Mathematics,Book 1, a text that I am previewing for personal reasons, and I see lots and lots of metric work, but little with feet and inches. On pg. 32, students measure to the nearest inch, and nothing else that I can see until pg. 318. With no review of 'half' and 'fourth' inches, it jumps to 'eights' -- there is one problem.

Oh boy. That's not good.

We're using Saxon 8/7, not 7/6.

I should check my copy of 7/6 & see what's in it.

What is your school using now for 7/6? ( think you've said, but I've forgotten.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Jul 2005

I wish I could remember where I read the estimate that American students lose a full 6 months time to learning both US measurement & metric.

That's a lot of time.

But when you think about it, that figure tells you something about how much practice it takes for a child to get this skill down.

(If I find the source, I'll post it.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Jul 2005

Our school replaced Saxon 7/6 with Passport to Mathematics, which they have used for the last 2 years. It's an abrupt change from the incremental steps of Saxon 6/5 to Passport, one that is absolutely devasting to many students.

-- InterestedTeacher - 01 Jul 2005

oh, swell.

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Jul 2005

I wonder what they or their folks can do to manage the situation.

We need to do as much writing as possible about how to keep your child in one piece in these classes.

Are the kids losing skills?

Do you see that?

What, more exactly, is the problem?

Can they not do Passport...or are they also, now, having trouble doing what you've taught them?

I guess what i'm asking is: what problems do they have, specifically?

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Jul 2005

Take a look at my post (where I'm trying to start my own page)which is linked on your birthday page by my own "dumb" entry. It will give you an idea with the type of lessons they do. (I'm still in Chap. 1 and am just flabbergasted by the waste of time!)

The students don't understand what they are expected to do. I know my class is definitely teacher-directed instructions, with some opportunities for student discovery. Algorigms are given and we practice the steps together. Where there are no algorithm, I "make up one". Step by step procedures are essential to help students with new concepts, especially as we get into more abstract reasoning, for it gives the students an opportunity to successfully get the answer even if they don't "get the concept" at first.

Students come to me to help them. I look at what has given them trouble and I see no evidence that there is any practice ahead of time before students are expected to do the work. I admit that I don't know what has been done in the classroom prior to the assignment. I once asked a student (I was trying to help) "How did your teacher tell you to do this problem?" The student told me they were instructed to guess.

Hmmmmmmmm! Hopefully, I can keep plowing into some of the next chapters.

-- InterestedTeacher - 01 Jul 2005

Students come to me to help them. I look at what has given them trouble and I see no evidence that there is any practice ahead of time before students are expected to do the work. I admit that I don't know what has been done in the classroom prior to the assignment. I once asked a student (I was trying to help) "How did your teacher tell you to do this problem?" The student told me they were instructed to guess.

Well, she's probably right.

My niece, who is in a GATE program in CA, sat in groups in her class for at least a week at one point guessing and checking.

Her teacher had reintroduced Connected Math.

It sounds like these parents are going to have to take matters into their own hands.

btw, what do you think about Kumon?

I had a couple of emails from Robert Talbert, who said he thinks it may be pretty good.

He worked in it as a grad student (I think that's right).

He hasn't seen any kids in his college who've come from Kumon, but his guess (I shouldn't be speaking for him, but I think this is accurate)--his guess is that they may be ready for calculus.

Apparently the Kumon problem sets are quite demanding.

I believe it based on what I've seen in SINGAPORE MATH & RUSSIAN MATH.

The Saxon problems are radically easier than the problems in the two foreign texts I know.

I'm thinking about taking Kumon algebra myself, partly just to see what it's like, and partly to jump ahead of Christopher, and 're-up' my algebra skills before he gets to 8th grade algebra.

-- CatherineJohnson - 01 Jul 2005

I've had a number of my students who have been in Kumon. One, a brilliant student, was in it because his parents wanted him to be ahead. He was ahead of us. He is the only student I've ever had who did the Saxon Multiplication Speeddrill (100 of them) in less than 1 minute. Kumon has their students do drill after drill. Lots of paper work.

I've also had students who were weak, whose parents had them in Kumon for the extra practice over the summer, or because Math is their weak subject and they want that extra work. As a teacher, I don't have any complaints.

Catherine, did you get a chance to pull up that new page I started? (It's on your birthday page.) It's another post about More Paper and Pencil work so perhaps you didn't know that it was new entry. I'd really like to get it some exposure and see if anyone else has had any experience with Passport to Mathematics. Take a look at all the time the students are wasting on the exercises in this text. I think you going to cringe at what you see.

You asked a question earlier about what kind of problems the students have using Passport. I think some of the parents could better answer that than I could. It's clear to me, now that I've studied up over the last few months, that they are being exposed to a constructivist approach.

-- InterestedTeacher - 02 Jul 2005

That new page I wanted to open up is MoreOrLessPaperAndPencil and it's also started on SingaporeWordProblemsSample2^?. (I really messed up trying to get it started and forgot where I had typed my "going to start a page" note. So it's on both pages. It certainly shows that I'm in over my head when it comes to technical stuff.

Oh, I'm reviewing Algebra again, from some old books which my husband dug out. The books were his father's and are really more like thick pamphlets. They were published in 1943 and are entitled Practical Mathematics, edited by Reginald Stevens Kimball. There were many of them in the series; my husband only has a handful left and they are very worn.

The division of polynomials was made so clear. I loved the way it was presented. I don't remember it being done that way, but I sure do like it. (I already reviewed Algebra when our son took it in the 8th grade several years back.) This is good for the brain.

-- InterestedTeacher - 02 Jul 2005

Yes, here it is. Guess and check is definitely in Passport to Mathematics. Does that leave much doubt what kind of program this is? I'll try to post something on it soon.

How do I post a new page so that it doesn't end up buried in the wrong place? Maybe I'll eventually get this down.

-- InterestedTeacher - 02 Jul 2005

Hi there,

I'm not sure what you mean by buried in the wrong place, but here's how it works:

to create a new page that links from a current page, you write a WikiWord for it in a comment. After you've entered your comment, there will be a link there, and a question mark after it; then you click on the question mark, and you're editing the new page. The comment becomes the link to it.

Note: The user page won't appear as a blog page on the front page. Until I can get a link to the user page in the sidebar (my ISP has had me locked out of it for days, humph), you'll have to get to it from the original comment.

I am thinking I'll create an "index of user pages" page that people can link their user pages to.

This information architecture thing is tougher than I thought! :)

-- CarolynJohnston - 02 Jul 2005

Hi, Carolyn.

Got it! I think! I wasn't necessarily trying to link to a current page. I was hopefully trying to generate a page on an unrelated topic and I wasn't expected it to show up with that link on Catherine's birthday page. It had nothing to do with her birthday and I was sort of embarrassed that it was there to tell you the truth.

I should have known to link it to something related.

Thanks.

-- InterestedTeacher - 02 Jul 2005

The drawings in this little Practical Mathematics book/pamphlet are amazing. I've never seen monomial and binomial factors sketched out like this, I don't think. These sketches make it all so clear. Wow!

I can tell that it's time to get out the Paper and Pencil for some serious practice -- I'm up to factoring the square of positive binomial. Just looking at these examples is not going to be enough, I can tell. I'm going to need to bring all of my senses to work, so I'm going to talk my way through these practice exercises as I work them out (paper and pencil).

But these little sketches make it so clear what is really happening.

I have a long way to go!

-- InterestedTeacher - 02 Jul 2005

I showed these sketches to my husband and he said that that was what he had in Descriptive Geometry in college. So that explains why I never saw it.

-- InterestedTeacher - 04 Jul 2005

I looked up Practical Mathematics, and it seems to be a huge 800-page series of books--have I got the wrong one?

-- CatherineJohnson - 05 Jul 2005

I just realized...I haven't read through this thread start to finish.

I will!

-- CatherineJohnson - 06 Jul 2005