Time Article - What Teachers Hate about Parents (x-posted)

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 08:59:01 -0500, Ericka Kammerer
wrote:

As for your examples, which are much better, I
have no beef with those in moderation. I do have a concern
if they take over the math homework, as it sets up a situation
where its overkill on one set of skills without providing
enough support for another set of skills. (I.e., the kids
spend too much time writing if they have to write volumes
every night in every subject, and not enough time getting
enough math practice in.)

Oh, I agree that they shouldn't be used to excess. I just think
that it is important to integrate all the subjects.

One of the things we never seem to do with math is teaching
students *how* to read a math text (or a science book). This
is a very different skill from reading a novel or a story or even
a non-fiction book about history.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

dragonlady wrote:

I figure if people learn language by ear (ie, spoken language) early,
then learn the written language later, why can't music be taught the
same way? My kids grew up singing -- a LOT! -- and listening to music.
Then when they got older, they learned to read music. My younger
daughter, especially, could sight read music (singing) better than I
could by middle school.

I do think there's a bit of a difference, though.
Think of it this way: how many people are great narrators?
Many people can read, but not all that many read out loud
really well, even though almost all of us use our voices
so regularly that it's second nature. You have to read
words *very* well to be a very good narrator, especially
reading on sight rather than having time to prepare.
Similarly, reading music for an instrumentalist
requires eye-hand coordination, while playing by ear
requires ear-hand coordination. I learned to play almost
exclusively by reading music, so my eye-hand coordination
on my instrument is very good. My ear-hand coordination,
however, is not good at all. When music school forced
me into working on my ear-hand coordination, it was a
very tough slog, and it was *definitely* a struggle
against years of conditioning--almost like learning
a second language. It shouldn't be as bad with
Suzuki, since reading music starts quite a bit
earlier than I started ear training ;-) Still, it's
a step. Given that I was working on classical music
and reading music is typically more important than
playing by ear, I would choose to have reading music
be my "native language" if I had to choose. I think
it's better still to be bilingual, but for my own
personal taste, Suzuki goes too far in the other direction.
Obviously, there are some who are quite successful with
it, though, so there's certainly a lot of room for
a difference of opinion ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

toto wrote:

On 28 Feb 2005 06:20:05 -0800, Banty wrote:


But it's not - at the least, the implementation fails. I think because
elementary school teachers are highly verbal.


I would agree with this which is why I think we need some
specialization at the elementary level with some teachers
actually concentrating in math and science.

I've seen some really good teachers who can do it all, but
not many.

My kids have been through an interesting array of
strategies. In kindy, it's all one teacher. For most of
first grade and all of second, they group the kids by current
ability for math and language arts. Each teacher takes a
group for each subject, so if there are four second grade
teachers, there are four levels of math and reading groups
(though sometimes there's a reading specialist or ESL
specialist creating more language arts groups). In the
GT program for third and fourth grades, it's back to a single
teacher. In 5th and 6th GT, they go back to having different
groups for math, language arts, and science, but this time,
one teacher does *all* the math groups, another all the
language arts groups, and the third all the science groups.
There is a reasonable degree of mobility among the groups
(barring the PITA teacher DS1 had in 2nd grade for math...),
and it seems to have worked very well. I'm curious how things
will go next year when we encounter 5GT. I've heard good
things about it.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article ,
toto wrote:


I think that learning the words and how they are spelled works best
while you are writing them in a journal or essay, so my thought would
be to let the kids write and look up spellings as needed. They can
correct the spelling of words they got wrong as well.

By nature, I'm a lousy speller -- and this approach never helped. In
order to look up a word to find the correct spelling, you have to
realize you spelled it wrong in the first place -- and I can look at an
incorrectly spelled word and never realize it was wrong. I'm a
voracious reader, and I used to bust my butt on spelling words -- but
was just always bad at it. By the time my kids were in upper elementary
school, they'd laugh at me for my inability to spell.

What has finally improved my spelling is computers and spell-checkers.
Honest -- I can now type out many pages with no spelling errors. There
is apparently something about the immediate feedback when I spell a word
wrong that was what *I* needed to learn to spell. I still won't win any
spelling bees, and I'm sure many of my postings here are full of errors
because I don't have a spell checker on my newsreader, but at least I've
gotten better.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

toto wrote:

On 28 Feb 2005 06:20:05 -0800, Banty wrote:

But it's not - at the least, the implementation fails. I think because
elementary school teachers are highly verbal.

I would agree with this which is why I think we need some
specialization at the elementary level with some teachers
actually concentrating in math and science.

Not all elementary teachers are non-math types, but I think that the
way things are now it is most likely that a primarily math/science
person would not go into elementary teaching. When I was in teaching,
the only people we had left at the high school and college level to
teach math were those that couldn't pass the security checks at the
base because they were foreign born or folks like dh who would take a
hit on his pension if he worked for the feds in any capacity.

I've seen some really good teachers who can do it all, but
not many.


grandma Rosalie

In article ,
"Tori M." wrote:

I dont know if this would help you but I know that 15% of a dollar is 15
cents. So then I multiply that by however many dollars that is.. It is
usualy an estimate... but it helps a bit for meTo figure out the tip at a
resturant it is handy to know the tax. In nh there is an 8% hospitality tax
so multiply the tax by 2 and there you go a 16% tip.. In WI it is a 5.5% tax
so you multiply the tax by 3 and you have a tip.. I always round up on top
of that.

I'm lazier -- and a fairly generous tipper. I just move the decimal
place over 1, round down to the nearest 50 cents, and double it. So a
tip on, say, a check for $36.90 would be: 3.69 rounded down to 3.50
doubled to $7.00. According to my calculator, that's almost 19%.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article ,
"Tori M." wrote:

we usualy end up to20% but I like knowing the base tip and work from there.
we add extra for politeness. The amount of mess from kids. Refills on
drinks.

I used to figure the tip and then leave an extra $1 per kid -- more if
they'd been particularly messy. And add more if the service had been
particularly wonderful. About the only thing I'll lower the tip for is
if they don't keep my water filled after I've asked them to, or if I
have to wait for the bill for a VERY LONG TIME with cranky kids....
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

dragonlady wrote:

In article ,
toto wrote:


I think that learning the words and how they are spelled works best
while you are writing them in a journal or essay, so my thought would
be to let the kids write and look up spellings as needed. They can
correct the spelling of words they got wrong as well.

By nature, I'm a lousy speller -- and this approach never helped. In
order to look up a word to find the correct spelling, you have to
realize you spelled it wrong in the first place -- and I can look at an
incorrectly spelled word and never realize it was wrong. I'm a
voracious reader, and I used to bust my butt on spelling words -- but
was just always bad at it. By the time my kids were in upper elementary
school, they'd laugh at me for my inability to spell.

What has finally improved my spelling is computers and spell-checkers.
Honest -- I can now type out many pages with no spelling errors. There
is apparently something about the immediate feedback when I spell a word
wrong that was what *I* needed to learn to spell. I still won't win any

Ditto ditto ditto what you said. I use a different word than use one
I couldn't spell or that wasn't included in my spell checker. But in
my case, learning to type meant I had to read every letter in the
word, which I did not do otherwise when reading. That alone improved
my spelling a whole lot, and the spell checker also helped. In my
case I have a spell checker on my news reader, but it checks at the
end and not while I'm typing. The spell checkers on word processors
drive me crazy.
..
spelling bees, and I'm sure many of my postings here are full of errors
because I don't have a spell checker on my newsreader, but at least I've
gotten better.

grandma Rosalie

On 28 Feb 2005 15:19:50 -0800, Banty wrote:

That's the Fortran (and probably other languages) way of expressing
"7 to the second power", which would be "7 squared".

Ah, ok. I haven't used Fortran since 1962 or so.

I am used to seeing 7 squared expressed as 7^2


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

"toto" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 10:25:22 +0000, Penny Gaines
wrote:

Banty wrote:

4 x 8 .... ? I dunno... I think it's somewhere between 28 to 36. No,
it's not 36 because that's 6 x 6 and I know that one. Okay lemme see: 8
+ 8 = 16. 16 + 16 is, um, (6+6 is 12, air fingers to carry the 1 ...
1+1+1= 3...). Got it!

I break it down to 2x8x2 = 16x2 = 32. Always have.

4 x 8 = 32 - I know that one. It is when it comes to things like

8 x 7 = (7**2) + 7 = 49 + 7 = 56

You mean (7*7) + 7 don't you?

You could also do (8*8) - 8 = 64 - 8 = 56. of course.

There are many ways to do this if you don't have some of the
facts memorized.

You could also do (10 - 2)* 7 = (10*7) - (2*7) = 70 - 14 = 56,
for example since the 10's and doubles are often the easiest
ones to remember.
Thanks to the good Sisters of St. Joseph, I don't have to think about any of
these problems. I know my times tables through the 12's.
Not too long ago my 11th grade students participated in a 1930's budget
activity. They were randomly assigned an occupation. The first step was to
find the occupation on the handout and discover their annual salary. The
next step required them to find their monthly income. Quick as lightening,
they pulled out their calculators (or their cell phones with my permission)
so they could divide their annual income by 12. As they made the
calculations, I asked "You need a calculator to divide by 12? What would
your 4th grade teacher have to say?"
~Cate