teaching algebra to elementary school students

In article ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:
Herman Rubin wrote:
In article ehrebeniuk-A65F0B.21082515012008@news,
Chookie wrote:
In article ,
(Herman Rubin) wrote:

That has its own disadvantages, because learning is a social endeavour as
well
as a personal one, and one can see (for example) different ways of arriving
at
the correct solution in a classroom -- that doesn't happen in electronic
classrooms AFAIK.

I do not see that as a problem in an electronic classroom.

Why not?

Again I point out that an electronic classroom differs
from the usual type only in that contact is electronic
rather than physical. It is not in any way using a
computer program, other than to assemble the class.

Study after study after study has documented differences
in mediated communication vs. non-mediated communication. Doesn't
necessarily mean that mediated communication has no place in
education, but you can't seriously make the argument that there
is no difference between an in-person class and an electronic
classroom. It simply isn't true.


Have you ever participated in a video conference?

There are few cases of electronic classrooms now,
but many of video conferences. The only mediation
in an electronic classroom is that the medium of
electronics assembles the class.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

On Tue, 15 Jan 2008 05:49:19 -0800 (PST), Beliavsky wrote:

On Jan 15, 5:19 am, Chookie wrote:

Ahhhh -- I was told (by a person assessing DS1) that a typical 3yo can count
to three. She was amazed when he counted to ten... and beyond it when he kept
going to 100! So we'll have to assume our children are Really Brilliant :-)
Observing my 2yo, counting to X comes more easily than understanding
the concept of number X. He can say the numbers up to 20, but he
cannot count more than 3 objects in a picture. There are 1, 2, 3,
"many".

I saw genuine understanding of correspondence when DS was only about 18mo.

We used to give him a few smarties (little round candy coated
chocolates). Quite often he would set one smartie onto three
different little plates, and give one plate to his dad, one to me
and have one for himself.

One day, his aunt and uncle came visiting. So this time he needed five
smarties, and five plates. I watched while he kept checking the numbers
of people and the numbers of smarties: you could almost see him
thinking. And he got it right, too.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

On Jan 15, 9:55 am, Beliavsky wrote:
On Jan 14, 9:01 pm, "Donna Metler" wrote:

In addition, what many parents of gifted kids have found is that if your
child is bright/moderately gifted, by all means go for the best, most
academic school, public or private, that your area has to offer. But if
you've got a truly out of the box kid, often such schools tend to feel that
they're already the best of the best and to be very rigid, so unless the
best, most academic just happens to meet your child's needs personally, your
square peg may not do well there.

The rigidity can span an entire state, such as left-wing
Massachusetts. It's my impression that the political climate for
gifted education is better outside the Northeast.

http://www.kidsboston.com/giftstry.htm
Scant school accomodation for state's brightest children
Boston Magazine, 10/99, Pg. 81
By Dan Sheridan

'By comparison, Virginia, with a population about the same as
Massachusetts, spends more than $21.3 million a year educating gifted
children. Missouri spends $32.1 million. Oklahoma earmarks $71
million. Florida allocates $437 million for education for the gifted.

Money is nor the only problem. Many teachers don't know how to deal
with their smartest students.

"A lot of teachers are very threatened by gifted kids," says Harris.

Massachusetts teacher-training programs, already under fire for
producing less-than-stellar graduates, offer almost no courses in
gifted education.

Sensitivities about whose kids are the smartest also play a role. "If
you had a program for the gifted, that would mean that there are
children who aren't. That's a truth a lot of parents here won't
tolerate," says a therapist who lives in Lexington.

"Let's say there are two parents chatting over the fence," says Joseph
Harrington of Stoughton, a European-history professor who founded the
private academic-enrichment summer programs College Gate and College
Academy.

"One can brag about a child hitting three home runs. But the other
can't do the same about the kid reading Darwin in the eighth grade.
That would be taken as, What are you saying -- my kid is dumb?"

For this and other reasons, affluent suburban towns are among the many
that do not have programs for gifted children.

"That's elitist"

"I wouldn't want a gifted and talented program in Lexington," says
Joanne Benton, director of elementary education in that town, which
has no special program for high achieving students. "That's elitist. I
think the very term 'gifted and talented' is elitist. I think that all
children have different gifts and we should be trying to provide for
them."

Weston's public schools also offer no programs specifically for gifted
kids. "You know, the whole idea of 'super smart' is a loaded term,"
says Paul Naso, principal of the Country School, one of Weston's two
kindergarten through-grade-three schools. By keeping class sizes low,
he says, "we like to think we are making accommodations for all
children" (though with enrollment increases, class size at the school
has crept back up to 23-24).'

Speaking as a Massachusetts resident, the state doesn't provide
funding for GT ed, and the towns can't raise the money just to meet
'basic' education programs. The Globe article you cited ('money is nor
(sic) only problem') underplays MA's minimal funding for *general*
education when compared to other states on a per pupil basis.

I don't believe it has a lot to do with left-wing versus right-wing
(although I have a theory about fiscal conservatives hung up on the
Laffer curve, and their great resistance to increasing property taxes
beyond 2.5%), but rather about whether the money is there.

Caledonia

Herman Rubin wrote:
In article ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:
Herman Rubin wrote:
In article ehrebeniuk-A65F0B.21082515012008@news,
Chookie wrote:
In article ,
(Herman Rubin) wrote:

That has its own disadvantages, because learning is a social endeavour as
well
as a personal one, and one can see (for example) different ways of arriving
at
the correct solution in a classroom -- that doesn't happen in electronic
classrooms AFAIK.

I do not see that as a problem in an electronic classroom.

Why not?

Again I point out that an electronic classroom differs
from the usual type only in that contact is electronic
rather than physical. It is not in any way using a
computer program, other than to assemble the class.

Study after study after study has documented differences
in mediated communication vs. non-mediated communication. Doesn't
necessarily mean that mediated communication has no place in
education, but you can't seriously make the argument that there
is no difference between an in-person class and an electronic
classroom. It simply isn't true.


Have you ever participated in a video conference?

There are few cases of electronic classrooms now,
but many of video conferences. The only mediation
in an electronic classroom is that the medium of
electronics assembles the class.

Yes, I've participated in a video conference.
I've actually participated in a wide variety of mediated
discussions, since I used to work in a lab studying
various forms of mediated communication. I can assure
you that there are differences. Whether they present
serious difficulties depends on the specifics of the
technology and class, but there are definitely differences
in many dimensions.

Best wishes,
Ericka

"Beliavsky" wrote in message
...
On Jan 15, 12:59 pm, Jeff wrote:
Yes - going by test scores alone pretty much is the same as only
going by
average student SES.
Which is really what some people are looking for,
anyway.

True, true.

But a lot of them don't like to admit it.

Although I'm a bit shocked how many people are willing to
be up front about it! (Big school boundary debate going on around
here at the moment...really crazy that a place with a six figure
median income and some of the best schools going has people who
couldn't possibly attend one of the local schools because their
kids just might rub elbows with some "have nots"--which around
here are probably folks who'd be solidly middle or upper middle
class anywhere else!)d

How sad. The rich kids learn a lot about life from the kids who are
better off.

Jeff

Did you mean "worse off" above?

I don't want my kids to be around kids who exhibit lower class
behavior stemming from lower class attitudes, which E.O. Banfield
characterized as excessive orientation to the present. One measure of
this would be the proportion of children in a school who were born to
unwed mothers. Yes, kids can "learn" from kids from different
backgrounds, but such learning can be destructive if it entails an
unlearning of the middle class values that have enabled my wife and me
to be successful.

At least here, if that's what you want, go private. There are quite a few
schools where you'd have no fear of your child running into anything BUT
middle class values, since even scholarship students go through a pretty
involved interview process to make sure they mesh.

In a public school, you take what you get. Most of the "best" schools here
are magnet schools, which is a way of getting around court-ordered
desegregation, and take a large percentage of their students from outside
the local attendance area. Now, these kids usually are screened by test
scores, and children with poor behaviors are excluded, but the whole school
isn't going to have values and attitudes that match yours.

On Jan 15, 12:59*pm, Jeff wrote:
Yes - going by test scores alone pretty much is the same as only
going by
average student SES.
* * Which is really what some people are looking for,
anyway.

True, true.

But a lot of them don't like to admit it.

* * Although I'm a bit shocked how many people are willing to
be up front about it! *(Big school boundary debate going on around
here at the moment...really crazy that a place with a six figure
median income and some of the best schools going has people who
couldn't possibly attend one of the local schools because their
kids just might rub elbows with some "have nots"--which around
here are probably folks who'd be solidly middle or upper middle
class anywhere else!)d

How sad. The rich kids learn a lot about life from the kids who are
better off.

Jeff

Did you mean "worse off" above?

I don't want my kids to be around kids who exhibit lower class
behavior stemming from lower class attitudes, which E.O. Banfield
characterized as excessive orientation to the present. One measure of
this would be the proportion of children in a school who were born to
unwed mothers. Yes, kids can "learn" from kids from different
backgrounds, but such learning can be destructive if it entails an
unlearning of the middle class values that have enabled my wife and me
to be successful.

Beliavsky wrote:
On Jan 15, 12:59 pm, Jeff wrote:
Yes - going by test scores alone pretty much is the same as only
going by
average student SES.
Which is really what some people are looking for,
anyway.
True, true.
But a lot of them don't like to admit it.
Although I'm a bit shocked how many people are willing to
be up front about it! (Big school boundary debate going on around
here at the moment...really crazy that a place with a six figure
median income and some of the best schools going has people who
couldn't possibly attend one of the local schools because their
kids just might rub elbows with some "have nots"--which around
here are probably folks who'd be solidly middle or upper middle
class anywhere else!)d
How sad. The rich kids learn a lot about life from the kids who are
better off.

Jeff

Did you mean "worse off" above?

They may be worse off financially, but, overall, I think they are better
off. There's more to life than money.

I don't want my kids to be around kids who exhibit lower class
behavior stemming from lower class attitudes, which E.O. Banfield
characterized as excessive orientation to the present. One measure of
this would be the proportion of children in a school who were born to
unwed mothers. Yes, kids can "learn" from kids from different
backgrounds, but such learning can be destructive if it entails an
unlearning of the middle class values that have enabled my wife and me
to be successful.

In article ,
Beliavsky says...

On Jan 15, 12:59=A0pm, Jeff wrote:
Yes - going by test scores alone pretty much is the same as only
going by
average student SES.
=A0 =A0 Which is really what some people are looking for,
anyway.

True, true.

But a lot of them don't like to admit it.

=A0 =A0 Although I'm a bit shocked how many people are willing to
be up front about it! =A0(Big school boundary debate going on around
here at the moment...really crazy that a place with a six figure
median income and some of the best schools going has people who
couldn't possibly attend one of the local schools because their
kids just might rub elbows with some "have nots"--which around
here are probably folks who'd be solidly middle or upper middle
class anywhere else!)d

How sad. The rich kids learn a lot about life from the kids who are
better off.

Jeff

Did you mean "worse off" above?

Hmmm...I thought he meant just what he wrote. Not everyone looks to their
wallet to gauge happiness.


I don't want my kids to be around kids who exhibit lower class
behavior stemming from lower class attitudes, which E.O. Banfield
characterized as excessive orientation to the present. One measure of
this would be the proportion of children in a school who were born to
unwed mothers.

Can't have THAT!!! Then don't go to my son's school ;-)

Yes, kids can "learn" from kids from different
backgrounds, but such learning can be destructive if it entails an
unlearning of the middle class values that have enabled my wife and me
to be successful.

Do you have any condfidence at all in instilling your own values? And when do
you expect them to learn how to deal with differences like these?

Banty

On 16 Jan 2008 07:31:54 -0800, Banty wrote:

Yes, kids can "learn" from kids from different
backgrounds, but such learning can be destructive if it entails an
unlearning of the middle class values that have enabled my wife and me
to be successful.

Do you have any condfidence at all in instilling your own values? And when do
you expect them to learn how to deal with differences like these?

Banty

Do you believe that others outside our home do not exert an influence on
our children?

On Jan 16, 10:31*am, Banty wrote:

Yes, kids can "learn" from kids from different
backgrounds, but such learning can be destructive if it entails an
unlearning of the middle class values that have enabled my wife and me
to be successful.

Do you have any condfidence at all in instilling your own values? *And when do
you expect them to learn how to deal with differences like these?

According to Judith Harris in "The Nurture Assumption", children are
influenced as much by their peer groups as by how their parents
interact with them, so choosing the peer group *is* an important role
parents play. Of course parents cannot totally control who their kids
socialize with, but they can and do choose schools on this basis and
restrict which homes their kids visit and who they can go out with.