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

In article , toto says...

On 17 Nov 2005 13:30:57 -0800, Banty wrote:

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! :-/

This one is just plain *wrong.* Is/of is a very bad shortcut.

So you recognize this method from my somewhat fractured description..

You need to explain that we are talking part to whole rather than
is/of. Using proportions to solve percent problems is fine (in fact
it is a good way to gerneralize to many kinds of proportions), but
using mnemonics that only apply to textbook problems means
that kids don't have the understanding of what they are doing.

The three different types of percent word problems are unknown
rate, unknown whole and unknown part. I would ask him to look
at the question and determine which is the unknown. A chart or
table can be made that shows each and has a ? or x in the
collumn for the unknown. The ration is percent/100 = part/whole
when we are speaking of percents. A good way to visualize
percents is to shade in squares on a 100 grid. You can then
use a grid of a larger or smaller number to visualize the answer
you need depending on what you are trying to find.

There are many ways to solve percent problems, but the key is
to understand what percent means.

OK, I'll concentrate on this:

The ration is percent/100 = part/whole

He knows what a percent *is*. It's just the formulation he'd stuck on.

Banty

On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:16:36 +0000 (UTC), Penny Gaines
wrote:

Barbara Bomberger wrote:

I've never known a teacher who did NOT want the outline, and the rough
draft, turned in for a grade

Really?**All*the*way*through*college,*and*in*ev ery*subject?**Amazing.

Bizby

And all through the classes of children now aging sixteen through
twenty six and their college educations.**yep,*I*meant*what*I*said.

FWIW, I don't remember ever having to give in an outline ever, in all
my years of education in England.


I think that this may very much be location thing from what I have
read here...

In article ,
toto wrote:

The *method* is not wrong, only the fact that she is not
teaching him to understand the process of using ratios,
but only teaching him an algorithm with a poor way of
remembering where the parts of the ratio go in the equation.
Many sites online use this too. It's common, but I dislike
it because it works only if the problem is written in the
kind of sentence that textbooks use. In the real world
you are not likely to find that kind of wording.

If you don't mind my butting in, textbooks that rely on standard wording in
this fashion are not very good textbooks. Ideally, they should present
word-based problems with a varied vocabulary, so that students rely on logic,
rather than specific words, to set up the problem for themselves.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

"In Melbourne there is plenty of vigour and eagerness, but there is
nothing worth being eager or vigorous about."
Francis Adams, The Australians, 1893.

"Barbara Bomberger" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:48:25 -0500, "Stephanie"
wrote:


"Barbara Bomberger" wrote in message
news
On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:32:33 -0500, "bizby40"
wrote:


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

I do quite a lot of writing, and knowing HOW to write from an
outline
is
handy -- occassionally, I even do it.

What is an outline exactly? Is it a precis of the paper, or do you
mean
the rough idea of the points you want to make?

Perhaps some of both. It is a structure for the paper, intended to
be
written before the actual paper to help you organize your thoughts.
The
classic form for an outline is this:
snipped

It looks to me like a drafting technique rather than a summary or
abstract
of
the paper. I'd therefore agree that it has no place in the marking
pile.

The outline for a paper is *not* generally turned in. It's only turned
in
and graded in the English classes that are specifically teaching that
method of writing a paper.

Bizby

I've never known a teacher who did NOT want the outline, and the rough
draft, turned in for a grade


I think in outlines. I used to write the paper, then make an outline and
pull stuff out and move it around for drafts.

Barb




And lots of people do. Its just that because that works in some cases,
it is not the best way for all of us to research a term paper, or do a
speech.


It's true. The skill of outlining first and flushing out more and more
detail is a good one as you get to bigger and bigger assignments as well.

Chookie wrote:

If you don't mind my butting in, textbooks that rely on standard wording in
this fashion are not very good textbooks. Ideally, they should present
word-based problems with a varied vocabulary, so that students rely on logic,
rather than specific words, to set up the problem for themselves.

Alas, there are a lot of bad textbooks out there.
I think school systems have a lot of trouble selecting a
good math text, in particular. I think the decisions are
often made by a group of people who don't have a lot of
expertise in the area (says she who sat on a committee
to choose an elementary math text for a school system
when she was *in high school*).

Best wishes,
Ericka

On 17 Nov 2005 19:45:17 -0800, Banty wrote:

OK, I'll concentrate on this:

The ratio is percent/100 = part/whole

He knows what a percent *is*. It's just the formulation he'd stuck on.

Hope that helps


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:11:06 +1100, Chookie
wrote:

In article ,
toto wrote:

The *method* is not wrong, only the fact that she is not
teaching him to understand the process of using ratios,
but only teaching him an algorithm with a poor way of
remembering where the parts of the ratio go in the equation.
Many sites online use this too. It's common, but I dislike
it because it works only if the problem is written in the
kind of sentence that textbooks use. In the real world
you are not likely to find that kind of wording.

If you don't mind my butting in, textbooks that rely on standard wording in
this fashion are not very good textbooks. Ideally, they should present
word-based problems with a varied vocabulary, so that students rely on logic,
rather than specific words, to set up the problem for themselves.

I agree, but math textbooks seem to be poor in this area.
They also tend to have problems that are very similar all in
one section so that students can apply the *formula* without
thinking about which formula they need to use.

I think that the emphasis on plugging in numbers and
computing has been around a long time at least in the US.


--
Dorothy

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

The Outer Limits

My experience is that 5-year olds are need machines. They NEED
attention, deeply, all the time, now now now! If you stand behind them
the whole time, even if you don't do anything productive other than
convince them you're paying attention, they'll be much more motivated
to do that homework. In fact, if they know that doing homework spells
their parent paying complete attention to them, they'll love homework.
They might do it wrong on purpose to enhance the interaction, but ...

Mine's currently 7. I stand behind their back the whole time, or sit
next to them reviewing previous pages, but do my best not to do the
work. I do make them correct everything, but I don't point out
mistakes until they reach a stopping point (done, or want me to review
their work). I do suggest strategies, and I do force them to review
the directions carefully. Perhaps I shouldn't suggest strategies, I'm
not sure.

I'm hoping that teenagers' dislike of parental anything will take me
off the hook of supervising their homework eventually. Mine already
will do math homework quickly on their own, just because it's a chance
for them to perform a skill they've already mastered.

In software, most bugs are the result of the interaction of one or two
or three features. You could try to write tests by doing one test per
feature, then one test per pair of features, then one test per triple
of features. But, it turns out, if you have one test cover lots of
different features, it covers all those features, and all the pairs of
those features, and all the triples of those features. Randomly
constructed hairy tests are phenomenally good at finding bugs. They
call it "pairwise testing", it's all the rage.

Now, substitute "software" with "child", "feature" with "skill", "bug"
with "difficulty", and "test" with "assignment". Hairy assignments
that combine all sorts of random skills are going to be phenomenally
good at finding skill combinations that cause children difficulty. If
you're having trouble finding anything they have difficulty with, then
hairy assignments are a good thing. If you're just trying to teach
them the basics, hairy assignments are going to get in the way.

wrote:

They do really require that homework be handed in. So about the best you can do
is to slough off on the assignment and turn in a poor product. But there are
two problem with that:

1. My son wanted to do a decent job. Letter grade or no.
2. Is this something I'd ever want to teach anyway??!? (Even skippin the
homework?)

I had an advisor in grad school who told me that the most important
thing to learn was what jobs should be done poorly. I've never been
sure what to make of that, but there's probably something there.

When I started to work in a job where I had to write complex reports
involving raw data, narrative and photos, I was told that there was no
such thing as a perfect report and I should not try to produce one.
It was more important that I produce a lot of work and not spend too
much time on it.

By that, they meant that on the data sheets (which were handwritten) I
shouldn't try to copy them over unless they were really unreadable but
just try to write the data in legibly the as I collected it. The
reports followed a certain format, and I should try to write
grammatically and spell correctly (because the reports were a matter
of public record), but I should concentrate on getting the facts
correct, citing the correct standards, doing the math accurately and
documenting what occurred rather than trying to make the report look
nice or spending time polishing what has been written.






grandma Rosalie