Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.

"dragonlady" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Donna Metler" wrote:

"dragonlady" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"bizby40" wrote:

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , bizby40 says...


"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , bizby40
says...

She may not be quite aware that that's what she did.

Aha! Now you're getting it. These "How" and "why"
questions are designed to make the child think about
how they solved something. And perhaps as they clue
in more to the strategies they are using, they will be
able to better apply those strategies in new situations.
Or perhaps when someone else in their class describes
the strategy *they* used, your child will realize that
the way they did it was better, and apply it next
time.

Do kids, after writing poetry, need to write how they came up
with
the
rhymes?
Would you think that a useful addition to the task?

How about if they count up the syllables in each poem, calculate
the
mean
and
standard deviation, and strive to decrease the standard
deviation.
They
can
calculate several after having written several limericks, for
the
different
lenghts of lines required.

That way they can get self-feedback on a measure of the quality
of
their
poetry.

Would you support something like that?

You know, if they had them do something like that, I'd
consider it a math assignment, and since they need to learn
math as well as English, that would be fine by me.

No no, that's not what is being discussed.

What if they were dinged in their *language* grade if they could
not
get
the
averages right?

I've already said that I don't really think it's appropriate to take
off for spelling in a math assignment, but I do consider being
able to explain or show your work to be a math skill, so having
it count towards a math grade makes sense to me.

If my child was bad at math, and if that was causing him to
get bad grades across all his subjects, I can see that I would
be frustrated. I might even feel that it wasn't fair. I'd also
feel that it was vitally important that he learn his math. I'd
ramp up our practice at hom, I might consider tutoring if
I felt there was a real need.

What you don't seem to be understanding is that those of us who were
frustrated by this requirement had kids who were NOT bad at math, but
getting bad math GRADES because they couldn't do the verbal part, or
"show their work" -- but they got the right answers and understood the
math part.

From the teacher POV, if a child can't explain how something works, it
is
hard to tell whether the child really understands, or has developed a
shortcut which may not work in the future, or is copying the answers
from
friend Jimmy on the bus. I used to have a real gift for what my father
calls
"Donnaisms"-finding something which got to the correct answer quickly
which
worked in a few cases, but not all, and usually these were a major
effort to
unlearn. For every child who truly has an intuitive grasp and can do
everything mentally, there are five who have discovered that a
calculator
can get them through their math homework in a few minutes.

But, eventually the rubber meets the road. At least on our state test,
students are not allowed to use a calculator on the computations section
of
the math test. If a student can't do it by themself, they will not do
well.
And, under current testing climate, it is the teacher and school who
will be
held accountable for not making sure the student truly understood.

In addition, state tests are written so that the other choices are
logical.
A student who makes a common and somewhat logical error will probably
find
an answer to match that error. The problems chosen do take advantage of
this. My "donnaisms" would have hurt me much more in today's climate
than
they did when I was in school (since teacher-made tests tend NOT to be
designed to trick students).

I understand it's frustrating for a child who really does understand and
who
is weak on writing (as a person with fine motor skills difficulties, so
that
writing HURTS, I empathize), but it is vitally important that a student
not
only be able to get the correct answer but to understand the method and
be
able to generalize it. And the teacher can't look inside the child's
brain
to see that.


My son always tested in the 99th percentile on the standardized math
tests, where they only thing they had to do was get the right answer.
(Actually, one year, he was in the 98th percentile -- he was very sad
that he'd dropped . . .)

And I find it insulting to suggest that getting the right answer without
"showing your work" must lead to a teacher suspecting either cheating or
an imperfect shortcut.
I can say this as a teacher. For every one child who can honestly get a
correct answer, there are a half dozen who think they can, but really can't.
Just because your child was a mathematical prodigy doesn't mean the typical
child is.

One bad thing about math book problems-they lend themselves to incorrect
shortcuts, because they're usually designed to be easy to write and easy to
grade. As a result, a smart child can very quickly figure out that this
works for the book problems, and never learn the more general case, which
then comes back to haunt them later. When I taught middle school, I saw this
very frequently-and the same parents who were screaming about "show your
work" were the ones who were screaming about a child failing a test when the
problems weren't the same as those in the book and couldn't be solved by a
shortcut method as easily.

My usual rule of thumb on this was to give the first problem (which could
not be solved by a shortcut) and require that the students do it "my way",
and then to allow students to do the rest any way they wanted, with the
understanding that I could only grade what I saw, and I couldn't give
partial credit for having the correct methodology but incorrect arithmetic
in step 4 if I couldn't see that this had happened.

This worked pretty well for middle school students.


--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

dragonlady wrote:
In article ,
toto wrote:

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:21:13 -0500, "bizby40"
wrote:


"Sidheag McCormack" wrote in message
...
Chookie writes:

In article ,
toto wrote:

It may be a word problem, but not necessarily. Inevitably in DD's math
work, there is a section called "Writing in Math". One such question
was "Tell how to find 81-36 using mental math." I still haven't figured
out how I would have answered it as a third grader.

Well, I always do things like that by rounding off and then adding or
subtracting.

81 is 1 more than 80 and 36 is 6 more than 30. 80-30 is 50 Then you
subtract 5 because 6 -1 is 5. So 50 - 5 = 45 and that is your answer.

What if you can't do it in your head?! I can assure you that I would not
have been able to hold all those bits in my head at the same time at
that age or now.

Lol, then you fail the course, because you "should" be able to do 81-36 in
your head! However different people will find different ways easier, which
surely is the point. Personally I'd do it like this: "81-40 is 41,
obviously, but oops, I was only supposed to subtract 36, which is 4 less
than 40, so now I'd better correct by adding the 4 back, getting 45".

And my first step is to say, "Okay, so 1-6, or 11 - 6 is five." Then once
I have the last digit I figure out the magnitude of the rest. "and 81-36 is
less than 50, so it must be 45."

Bizby


So many correct ansswers.


Unfortunately, none of them is "81 - 36 is 45 because, well, because it
IS" -- like 3-2 is 1 becaus it just IS.

FYI, since we just had this one like this last night, One's answer
(adjusting for your example -- he's in 3d grade, btw) was, first I go
down 3 in the 10's place, then I subtract 6. The question accompanied
a worksheet practicing doing just that, so I assume it was a check that
the kids understood the principle being reviewed (as opposed to just
pulling out a calculator to answer the other questions). Of course, as
One's school doesn't grade -- no, really, no A's, no B's, no Excellents
or Outstandings or 1's or 2's -- we don't face the issues others do
about grading or evaluating grammar and sentence structure in
responding to these questions.

Barbara
Barbara

Marie wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:19:56 -0500, Ericka Kammerer
wrote:

Waaaaaaaaay too many kids (even at the college level)
will leave a big paper until the bitter end if there
aren't earlier deadlines, and then they do a lousy
job of it and don't get much out of the assignment.
An outline is a convenient way of conveying to the
teacher that an appropriate amount of information
has been gathered and one has developed an appropriate
argument and supporting information. If it weren't
for that, I think there'd be little requirement
for outlines aside from some assignments when
outlines were being taught.

I have to say, my papers were always the best when they were last
minute. All my last-minute projects were best. If I worked on
something a bit at a time everyday or so, it was not as good. This was
even in college. And I know many people who are the same way.

Many people feel that way, but I don't really
buy it. The last minute effort may be better than the
same effort stretched out, but serious editing *does*
improve a paper when done well, and there's no time
for that when you leave it to the end. In other words,
putting in a long stretch of intense effort may get
some creative juices flowing and allow you to keep your
argument in your head better and so on, and thus result
in a better first cut than stretching things out over
time, but the paper would be better still if you could
then put it away a bit and come back and do some real
editing. The number of geniuses who truly can write a
perfect paper in one last-minute sitting are very few.
Those who rarely do that sort of editing are deprived
of learning how to really *do* that kind of critical
reading and editing to improve the work.
I certainly sympathize with your situation.
I did a lot of stuff last minute myself (and did
very well with them relative to the standards for
grading in the classes). When I had to write professionally,
it was a very different story. That first cut simply
wasn't adequate when the standards got ratcheted up.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Donna Metler wrote:

A third grader's math journal would be more like "Explain why 3/4 is bigger
than 2/3". Math journal assignments follow the math assignment, and third
grade math books aren't going to be spending much time on one digit
addition. (And mind you, I say this as a former third grade teacher).

Similarly, I don't know many teachers, or texts, which will say "show all
work" for something which would be mental math for many students. 13 divided
by 4 wouldn't have much work to show. 1395/4 might, and 13952/42 probably
would.

Well, here's the math writing assignment for the
chapter on addition and subtraction in a 3rd grade math
text: http://tinyurl.com/cczjs

And, as I said before, for every single student who really could, say, do
long division completely mentally and get to the right answer, there were at
least a half dozen who proved they couldn't when it came to test day.

Which is a fine learning experience, in my book.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article , Donna Metler says...




And I find it insulting to suggest that getting the right answer without
"showing your work" must lead to a teacher suspecting either cheating or
an imperfect shortcut.
I can say this as a teacher. For every one child who can honestly get a
correct answer, there are a half dozen who think they can, but really can't.
Just because your child was a mathematical prodigy doesn't mean the typical
child is.

One bad thing about math book problems-they lend themselves to incorrect
shortcuts, because they're usually designed to be easy to write and easy to
grade. As a result, a smart child can very quickly figure out that this
works for the book problems, and never learn the more general case, which
then comes back to haunt them later. When I taught middle school, I saw this
very frequently-and the same parents who were screaming about "show your
work" were the ones who were screaming about a child failing a test when the
problems weren't the same as those in the book and couldn't be solved by a
shortcut method as easily.

Well, my son isn't a prodigy. I think that he has enough math ability to get by
for a good distance, then tends to not want to work on really getting it down.
I don't think all the weighing down with written descriptions in younger grades
helped at all - all he wants to do is get the homework done fast with some kind
of acceptable grade. He isn't looking to nail it, unfortunately. He couldn't
do it before because he couldn't nail the written parts, why should he strive to
do it now :-/

But the question is how to show the work (on a more complex problem) and how to
make sure they're not taking some shortcut that won't work for more general
cases.

I still maintain it doens't have to be *written*. An example given recently in
this thread described a whole written description of regrouping. My teachers
also wanted to see some work, but to have the carried numbers written above the
numbers to sum does that quite adeequately.

And, frankly, I think the *school* introduces some shortcuts that aren't useful.
I'll give two examples.

The first I described already. I dont' know yet (will soon) how trig is taught
nowdays, but I struggeld with the opposites and adjacents and hypotenuses, and
only understood trig some years later when I introduced myself to the unit
circle. Trig isn't just about triangles! Opposites and hypotenuses may get
most students to get their math state testing problems right, but trig has
applications to waves and spatial resprpentations that fall right out of the
basic mathematics, which is the unit circle. It's the *school* that was only
showing me some way to look at it that only had to do with triangles - the
narrowly-applicable shortcut. And confusing me with the verbal descriptions to
boot. I only understand what they were trying to teach me in *retrospect*.

The second example is what I saw my son doing last night with percents. He's
been taught a ratio method of doing percents. OK, fine as far as it goes (but
it had him bamboozled as to why, if he knows that y is 80% of x, x is NOT y plus
20% of y!). For this and a HOST of other applications I handle this easily with
a little analytical algebra equation. But nooo, my son resisted that. He had
been taught with this little *shortcut* setup that only applied to percent
questions! He was taught that the answer is found in a numerator if he's being
asked and "of" question vs. - gosh I forget I don't even look at it quite that
way. Yes, setting it up as a simple algebraic question boils down in this
subset of cases to a simple ratio. But why teach him the ratio trick just for
percents? Why? - cause it will get the quicker answers on the 8th grade
regents percents questions! :-/


My usual rule of thumb on this was to give the first problem (which could
not be solved by a shortcut) and require that the students do it "my way",
and then to allow students to do the rest any way they wanted, with the
understanding that I could only grade what I saw, and I couldn't give
partial credit for having the correct methodology but incorrect arithmetic
in step 4 if I couldn't see that this had happened.

This worked pretty well for middle school students.

Well, if you're teaching at our school, your way *is* the narrowly applicable
shortcut.

Banty

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:32:59 -0500, Jeanne
wrote:

Well, with NCLB, public education will have to find a way to educate
every child. I don't think anyone is asking for perfection. Just
flexibility, maybe.

The NCLB is NOT going to be able to do this despite it's
high flown promises. It is too test oriented. Getting test scores
is not the same as getting an education and aside from that
the accountability rules don't allow for flexibility.


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 21:46:29 +1100, Chookie
wrote:

One does not always solve in that way. It may be a quadratic equation, for
example.

Hmm, I'm quite sure that in deriving the solution to the general quadratic
equation, we still performed operations on both sides of the equals sign!

But what I really meant was: your son may not have grasped that you need to
perform the same operation on each side of the equation, particularly if he is
on simpler stuff like my example, or even questions like 3x-12=0. I suspect
this because it sounds like he thinks the *sequence* of operations is
important, rather than that the teacher is trying to simplify the equation
with every step. KWIM?

Yes, but if the teacher is saying plus, multiply, then plus, she may
be confusing him into thinking that.

Unfortunately in prealgebra and algebra I some teachers never
do make it clear that as long as you do the *same* operation on
both sides of the equation with the *same* quantity, the solution
will be correct.

For example
2x - 8 = 24 can be solved by
first adding 8 to each side of the equation, then dividing by 2

2x - 8 = 24
2x - 8 + 8 = 24 + 8
2x = 32
2x/2 = 32/2
x = 16

or
first dividing both sides of the equation by 2 (and using the
distributive property) and then adding 4 to both sides of the
equation

2x - 8 = 24
(2x - 8)/2 = 24/2
2x/2 - 8/2 = 24/2
x - 4 = 12
x - 4 + 4 = 12 + 4
x = 16

The distributive property is often not understood properly
by students at this level because they have never used
it to do mental math or seen arithmetic done this way
using manipulative or simple number equations, btw.


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:36:09 -0500, Jeanne
wrote:

School systems usually pick ONE curriculum for
a subject in a grade and all the teachers use it.

ONE curriculum does not mean that teachers cannot
(except in the case of scripted curriculums) use many
methods to teach the material.

More and more curricula are including many *methods*
of teaching the core concepts to the children and
teachers are being encouraged to use visual and
tactile methods as well as auditory methods to
present the material.


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits

Ericka Kammerer wrote:
Marie wrote:
On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:19:56 -0500, Ericka Kammerer
wrote:
Waaaaaaaaay too many kids (even at the college level)
will leave a big paper until the bitter end if there
aren't earlier deadlines, and then they do a lousy
job of it and don't get much out of the assignment.
An outline is a convenient way of conveying to the
teacher that an appropriate amount of information
has been gathered and one has developed an appropriate
argument and supporting information. If it weren't
for that, I think there'd be little requirement
for outlines aside from some assignments when
outlines were being taught.

I have to say, my papers were always the best when they were last
minute. All my last-minute projects were best. If I worked on
something a bit at a time everyday or so, it was not as good. This was
even in college. And I know many people who are the same way.

Many people feel that way, but I don't really
buy it. The last minute effort may be better than the
same effort stretched out, but serious editing *does*
improve a paper when done well, and there's no time
for that when you leave it to the end. In other words,
putting in a long stretch of intense effort may get
some creative juices flowing and allow you to keep your
argument in your head better and so on, and thus result
in a better first cut than stretching things out over
time, but the paper would be better still if you could
then put it away a bit and come back and do some real
editing. The number of geniuses who truly can write a
perfect paper in one last-minute sitting are very few.
Those who rarely do that sort of editing are deprived
of learning how to really *do* that kind of critical
reading and editing to improve the work.
I certainly sympathize with your situation.
I did a lot of stuff last minute myself (and did
very well with them relative to the standards for
grading in the classes). When I had to write professionally,
it was a very different story. That first cut simply
wasn't adequate when the standards got ratcheted up.

I certainly think good editing improves almost any writing effort and
that it's pretty difficult to do an adequate job of editing if you're
doing a term paper in a a single sitting. OTOH, leaving it to the "last
minute" isn't necessarily the same thing as not leaving yourself time
for revision. When I was in college and grad school, I don't think I
EVER outlined a paper before I wrote it (simply because I never found
an outline remotely helpful when it came to actually producing the
paper) and I usually waited until the deadline was fairly imminent to
start writing. Typically, however, I'd been writing (and rewriting)
bits and pieces of the paper in my head literally for weeks, so that
when I sat down to do the first draft, I generally got through it
pretty quickly, leaving myself a some time for editing and revision
before arriving at the final product. (Also, the word processor was
available by the time I was in college, meaning that I actually edited
WHILE I wrote in addition to after I was done with the first cut.)

Part of the issue for me is that I'm all but incapable of writing the
pieces down on paper before I can assemble them into a whole that
starts with the first sentence and ends at the last. I know that some
people are quite capable of writing the body of their papers and then
coming back to write the introduction, but I can't do that. If I don't
start at the beginning and work right through to the end, I'll end up
with a bunch of disconnected bits that don't fit together properly.
It's just a peculiarity of the way my brain is put together, I guess.
It certainly wouldn't work for everyone, but trying to force me to
follow some sort of model for writing a paper because that's the
"right" way is just as bad as any of the other "one-size-fits-all"
educational approaches we've been talking about it.
--
Be well, Barbara

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 08:17:11 -0500, "bizby40"
wrote:

But he really likes science and history books, and
again, he can't read those on his own.

There are books that are factual about science and
history that are also easy readers for 4 to 8 year olds.

Try Dr. Fred's book
Dr. Fred's Weather Watch: Create and Run Your Own
Weather Station
by Alfred B. Bortz, J. Marshall Shepherd, Fred Bortz

Also try Usborne books at:
http://www.usborne.com/

History:
BEGINNERS
Ancient Greeks
Castles
Dinosaurs
Egyptians
Elizabeth I
Knights
Romans

Nature (Science)

BEGINNERS
Bears
Caterpillars and Butterflies
Cats
Dinosaurs
Dogs
Eggs and Chicks
Farm Animals
Horses and Ponies
Night animals
Rubbish & Recycling
Spiders
Tadpoles and Frogs
Under the Sea

USBORNE POCKET SCIENCE
How do animals talk?
How does a bird fly?
Pocket Scientist - The blue book
Pocket Scientist - The red book
What makes a flower grow?
What's under the ground?
What's under the sea?
Why do tigers have stripes?

Another source for science books:
http://www.lilypadbooks.com/cgi-bin/...1+ 1103409363

http://snipurl.com/k03p

Another source of history books for young readers
is the *All Aboard Reading* books - they have both
history and science books.

Mummies (All Aboard Reading) by Joyce Milton
Pirate School (All Aboard Reading, Level 2 (Ages 6-8))
by Cathy East Dubowski
Planets (All Aboard Reading) by Jennifer Dussling
Simply Science: An All Aboard Reading Collection,
Station Stop 1 (All Aboard Reading Station Stop 1)

Search Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders for
children's books on the topics he is interested in
and look for the reading levels indicated.





--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits