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Entries from TotalWasteOfTime

HolyBureaucraticNightmareBatman 16 May 2005 - 00:13 CatherineJohnson

. . . sigh . . .

ColoradoMathStandards 24 May 2005 - 04:34 CatherineJohnson

I was just perusing the 2005 Thomas B. Fordham Foundation assessment of state math standards, and I found this passage drawn from Colorado's standards:

Second grade students will, using objects and pictures, represent whole numbers including odds and evens from 0 to 1,000. Third grade students will, using objects and pictures, represent whole numbers including odds and evens from 0 to 10,000. Fourth grade students will, using objects and pictures, represent whole numbers including odds and evens from 0 to 1,000,000.
The authors take a dim view of this requirement:

Grasping the concept of even and odd numbers does
not require three years of collecting progressively more
objects. The time devoted to collecting and displaying
objects and pictures is better spent on other activities.

I'll say.

The report gives Colorado's standards a D, the same grade they received last year.

SpotTheFallacy 05 Jun 2005 - 13:20 CarolynJohnston

There's a new book out called "National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling", by two education professors at Penn State, and published by Stanford University Press. It was discussed in yesterday's PhysOrg.com newsletter (hat tip: bernie).

They analyzed data from the Third International Study of Mathematics and Sciences, which in 1994 and 1999 collected a lot of data on educational effectiveness in 41 countries. From the article:

Their findings indicated a frequent lack of positive correlation between the average amount of homework assigned in a nation and corresponding level of academic achievement. For example, many countries with the highest scoring students, such as Japan, the Czech Republic and Denmark, have teachers who give little homework. "At the other end of the spectrum, countries with very low average scores -- Thailand, Greece, Iran -- have teachers who assign a great deal of homework," [author] Baker noted.

Their conclusion is that homework is actually bad for learning, proving that even education researchers can be tripped up by the correlation implies causation fallacy.

But worse than that, homework is not politically correct:

If schools expect every family to reinforce the child's learning process at home, they need to realize that, when families are unequal to the task, students will not receive the same quality of education. The addition of homework will only exacerbate existing inequities within a nation's student population and pull down overall scores, said Baker. "Those families that are better able to marshal resources to support outside school learning will likely gain disproportionate advantage," he added.

Fixing this problem will put us one step closer to the year when everyone will finally be equal.

WebmasterApologizes 03 Jun 2005 - 02:38 CarolynJohnston

To Catherine, who couldn't change the name on one of her posts; and to all who tried and were unable to comment today: I'm sorry. It was my fault.

Pick an excuse:

a. I gotta stop webmastering when I'm drowsy. b. I'm a novice at this, so sue me!

Anyway, the problem is all fixed now.

Please note our new 'anonymous login' feature! Enter a comment, and when the system prompts you for a username, give:

username: KtmGuest

password: guest

So if you're shy, now you can leave us a comment anyway, and we hope you will!

TestOfBlikiFeatures 20 Jan 2006 - 20:22 CarolynJohnston

This is a first test of a new page protection system for KTM... hopefully this will stop the problems people are having with not being able to edit the web pages that they create.

Your inexperienced webmaster is very sorry for any inconvenience anyone is experiencing. :)

ConnectedMathProjectList 14 Sep 2005 - 16:58 CatherineJohnson

I'm going to have to pace myself.

One week into the new school year and I'm already fuming. The Connected Math page Carolyn found hasn't helped.

It's worth reading the whole thing.

Here's a project that caught my eye:

Bits and Pieces II
Ordering from a Catalog
Students select items from a catalog and fill out an order form, calculating shipping, tax, and discounts.

That's special.

Susan S says....

Boy, they seriously need to update to more 21st century skills. A better world application might be to go to Amazon.com and click on your own special one-click button. Why should life be so complicated?

MathClassWarmUp 26 Sep 2005 - 19:40 CatherineJohnson

For their warm-up in math class yesterday, the kids penciled in all the odd numbers on a worksheet to see what word they spelled.

They spelled the word odd.

Clearly, ed schools do not teach the concept of opportunity costs.

MathJournalDayTwo 30 Jun 2006 - 16:49 CatherineJohnson

OK, state tests start one week from tomorrow, and the kids wrote in their Math Journals again today.

They wrote in their Math Journals yesterday, too. The teacher put an inspirational quote about what to do when you crash into a wall up on the board, and they were supposed to write about how the quote related to the state test. (NOTE: Christopher cannot pronounce inspirational.)

Today's quote was something about 'not thinking about what you've lost.'

Excuse me while I hunt down a Google image for banging my head against the wall.

[pause]

OK, that was quick.

No math homework tonight!

No Top Secret Glencoe Diagnose - Prescribe - Practice workbook!

No math of any kind!

So I've spent my entire evening pulling worksheets out of the 3-inch DuraTech worksheet binder I assembled awhile back and combining them with fill-in-the-gap worksheets I tracked down on the web today and coaxing-coercing Christopher to apply himself and do some math.

news flash: Christopher does not appear to know how to read a coordinate plane.

More specifically, he does not appear to know that a coordinate plane is made up of two number lines; nor does he seem to understand that you never, ever, under any circumstances have positive numbers to the left of the zero, or below the zero in the case of the Y axis.

THEY ALWAYS PUT THE NUMBERS ON!!!!!

HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT WAS A NEGATIVE NUMBER!!!!

THEY DIDN'T PUT ANY NUMBERS ON!!!!

etc.

diagnose - prescribe - practice!

winner worksheets

Two fantastic resources:

Glencoe Pre-algebra Parent and Student Study Guide
"The Glencoe Parent and Student Study Guide is designed to help you support, monitor, and improve your child's math performance. These worksheets are written so that you do not have to be a mathematician to help your child."
The entire guide is available free online.
SUPERB

Mathtastic worksheets by Susan D. Phillips
50 worksheets, mostly pre-algebra with some algebra, all available free online
EXCELLENT

The other two sources I'm relying on are Kelley Wingate Pre-Algebra and Instructional Fair Pre-Algebra. Both are quite good, though I've gotten more use out of Instructional Fair for some reason. I'll probably spring for most of the Instructional Fair workbooks as I go along. The Lakeshore stores carry them, and you can order them online from Frankschaffer.com, though they're somewhat difficult to track down on the site.