Post by Doggy Mommy on Sept 30, 2013 22:13:39 GMT -5
Here is an example why students need to UNDERSTAND what they are doing rather than just crunch numbers. Today I handed out a "challenge" math problem. It was extremely hard (for 4th graders) and involved the numbers 24 and 36. Some kids raised their hands and were all, "12! The answer is 12!" Um, the problem had absolutely nothing to do with subtracting 24 from 36. Not even close. They didn't even bother trying to understand the problem. I want kids to KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING and not just thoughtlessly find answers.
For the math problem you are talking about, it isn't just about stacking 22 and 10 on top of each other and finding the answers. I want to know if they understand place value and base 10.
I don't know what the reading is all about so I won't comment on that, but I think you should encourage your child to pay attention in math and learn to explain his understanding of math problems.
It is reasonable to expect that primary-grade students should be given enough written information about homework that their parents will be able to help if they forget or don't understand or weren't paying attention.
It's not your homework. It's his. He needs to pay attention in class.
Some kids don't have the luxury of parents who even speak English, so they have no choice but to listen hard in class. Maybe your son's teacher does this on purpose, so her students have to listen and so parents don't do homework for their kids.
It is reasonable to expect that primary-grade students should be given enough written information about homework that their parents will be able to help if they forget or don't understand or weren't paying attention.
It's not your homework. It's his. He needs to pay attention in class.
Some kids don't have the luxury of parents who even speak English, so they have no choice but to listen hard in class. Maybe your son's teacher does this on purpose, so her students have to listen and so parents don't do homework for their kids.
It is reasonable to expect that primary-grade students should be given enough written information about homework that their parents will be able to help if they forget or don't understand or weren't paying attention.
It's not your homework. It's his. He needs to pay attention in class.
Some kids don't have the luxury of parents who even speak English, so they have no choice but to listen hard in class. Maybe your son's teacher does this on purpose, so her students have to listen and so parents don't do homework for their kids.
This is the point that I was trying to make. I don't understand why it's important if you understand or not. It is HIS homework.
apalettepassion.wordpress.com/ WHO IS BONQUIQUI!?!?!?!??!
"I was thinking about getting off on demand, but it sounds like I should be glad that I didn't"
Okay, traditional algorithm - explanation: I stacked the numbers, first I added the numbers in the one column, carried the one and added it to the sum of the numbers in the tens column. My answer was 112.
56 +56 112
I make 98 into 100 because it is easier to add to 100. That means I need to subtract 2 from 75, giving me 73. I can add 100 to 73 in my head and get 173.
My H does math like this and it makes me so confused just because I was never taught this way and I don't think that. I never knew it was an actual method - I thought he just made it up.
Thanks so much for the explanation. And I find your pet peeve really interesting. I just remember the fear of third grade math because of fractions and decimals!
All parents think that their kids are gifted. I once sat in a meeting with a mom who talked about how incredibly gifted her son was for a solid 20 minutes. He had a functional IQ in the 70s. Gifted? Not so much.
Using the excuse that your kid is gifted so is bored and doesn't need to do the work only harms your child. Hold your child responsible for paying attention in class and completing the work assigned. If you feel that the work is below his ability level, address that with the teacher but don't let your 2nd grader use the "I'm too smart to pay attention to this" excuse. One day not too long from now, he won't know what the F is going on in math and he'll continue to use this excuse.
Like everyone on ML, I was gifted. I still had to do my work regardless of how interesting, challenging, or easy I found it. If I didn't, I was in major shit at home. My parents didn't tolerate that laziness.
Never fear, Joenali's here to tell us all that teachers are fabulous and parents should just shut up and know how hard teachers have it and how right they are in everything they do....
I LOLed for real at this. I'm a teacher and I definitely read their HW. Why assign it if you feel it has no value?
Never fear, Joenali's here to tell us all that teachers are fabulous and parents should just shut up and know how hard teachers have it and how right they are in everything they do....
I LOLed for real at this. I'm a teacher and I definitely read their HW. Why assign it if you feel it has no value?
Because administration tells you too. Do please tell me what I should do with it, all 78+ pages of it. And do please tell me what you get out of reading their homework that you couldn't get from regular class work?
I LOLed for real at this. I'm a teacher and I definitely read their HW. Why assign it if you feel it has no value?
Because administration tells you too. Do please tell me what I should do with it, all 78+ pages of it. And do please tell me what you get out of reading their homework that you couldn't get from regular class work?
I teach 8th grade English and US history, so I get that it's a lot to read. I'm not saying you should study every single thing they write or compute, but yeah, if you're going to assign it, I think you should look it over.
I assigned a quick write about setting recently. I have 70 students and I did sit down and read every students' answers (about a paragraph each) and wrote a short comment on each one. Of course it took time, but it gave me additional info on their understanding of setting. I want to see what they retain when they leave me and my classroom. It's easy to remember the info when you're in the classroom, sitting next to a partner, anchor charts on the wall. But can the student still understand the content hours later when the classroom support is taken away?
Today I taught similes and metaphors. The HW was to write 3 similes and 3 metaphors and then explain the comparisons in each. Of course I will be reading their HW because I want to see what errors they might be making when they are working on their own.
Post by janetplanet20 on Sept 30, 2013 22:52:47 GMT -5
One more reason for having kids explain their answers in math- Last week two kids tried really hard to argue with me that 50-12=48. I had to work it out on the board for them to get them to understand why they were wrong. This is in 8th grade.
They were calculating their citizenship grades and subtracting their demerits. A student didn't understand why his grade wasn't an A if he only had 12 demerits (out of 50 merits).
I LOLed for real at this. I'm a teacher and I definitely read their HW. Why assign it if you feel it has no value?
Because administration tells you too. Do please tell me what I should do with it, all 78+ pages of it. And do please tell me what you get out of reading their homework that you couldn't get from regular class work?
Seriously? I thought you held yourself out here as teacher extraordinaire yet here you are, teaching the kids that their homework has no value. Look, I get that you can't grade very piece of it. Personally, I don't believe in grading hw in elementary school. I sent hw that was intended for practice, not to gauge mastery, and while I agree that I got a better sense of how the students were coming along from in class work, I did still look over their work. It was mostly as simple as a run around the classroom to check that it was complete, along with going over 2-3 randomly selected problems but I did it, even though I'm also not big on elementary school hw.
Do you even realize how similar this is to the OP's situation? joenali is to her admin as OP is to the teacher.
I taught English 7-12. 8th Grade English, English I, Publications, Communications, and Novels. I'd plan to not give classes homework that was due on the same day, and I would make the assignments short and relevant for the most part. It helped that I had two sections of 8th/English I and the other classes didn't get as much homework. It did take forever.
You said they'll get feedback when it matters, so what do you give feedback on?
I spend their independent classwork time giving them immediate feedback -- I make sure that, at some point, I'm having a (short) conversation with every kid in the class. They submit every essay twice -- once in rough draft form, with my comments, and then once in final copy, with my comments and then a final grade. They have shorter quizzes at least once a week (more formative than summative) that let me know where they're at and what we need to go over.
I've just found that if I inundate my kids with feedback, they're not going to read it. It's more, like, "what did I get on this?" rather than "how can I make this better?"
I can't do math. Like, at all. I'm reading these different methods and all of them make zero sense to me.
But I did come in to say that I assign very little homework, and I review it much the same way that W.T.Faulkner employs.
Have you used Google Drive? It has completely changed the way I teach English and History (7th and 8th grades). I can edit, comment on, and check progress in real time. I love, love, love it.
Because administration tells you too. Do please tell me what I should do with it, all 78+ pages of it. And do please tell me what you get out of reading their homework that you couldn't get from regular class work?
Seriously? I thought you held yourself out here as teacher extraordinaire yet here you are, teaching the kids that their homework has no value. Look, I get that you can't grade very piece of it. Personally, I don't believe in grading hw in elementary school. I sent hw that was intended for practice, not to gauge mastery, and while I agree that I got a better sense of how the students were coming along from in class work, I did still look over their work. It was mostly as simple as a run around the classroom to check that it was complete, along with going over 2-3 randomly selected problems but I did it, even though I'm also not big on elementary school hw.
Do you even realize how similar this is to the OP's situation? joenali is to her admin as OP is to the teacher.
Oh please! No one has yet to tell me how homework will inform my instruction. I send practice hw as well. I use what the children produce at school to inform my instruction. How the eff do I know who is doing the work at home, parents or kids? Great, they do their homework I look to see who turns it in and it goes in the recycle. All class work either gets put in a portfolio or is sent home. Hw is not the end all be all in my room. I even told parents that it's up to them if they want to do it or not!
Seriously? I thought you held yourself out here as teacher extraordinaire yet here you are, teaching the kids that their homework has no value. Look, I get that you can't grade very piece of it. Personally, I don't believe in grading hw in elementary school. I sent hw that was intended for practice, not to gauge mastery, and while I agree that I got a better sense of how the students were coming along from in class work, I did still look over their work. It was mostly as simple as a run around the classroom to check that it was complete, along with going over 2-3 randomly selected problems but I did it, even though I'm also not big on elementary school hw.
Do you even realize how similar this is to the OP's situation? joenali is to her admin as OP is to the teacher.
Oh please! No one has yet to tell me how homework will inform my instruction. I send practice hw as well. I use what the children produce at school to inform my instruction. How the eff do I know who is doing the work at home, parents or kids? Great, they do their homework I look to see who turns it in and it goes in the recycle. All class work either gets put in a portfolio or is sent home. Hw is not the end all be all in my room. I even told parents that it's up to them if they want to do it or not!
Oh, FFS, drop this whole "inform my instruction" shit. Does it have to be about you?
You are required to assign HW. You feel it has no value, yet you assign it anyway. If you are going to assign work to your students, for any reason at all, then you should do them the simple courtesy of showing them that their efforts have value by looking it over and spending 5 minutes of your day, total, on going over a problem or two from the hw. It won't hurt the kids who didn't do it, they can benefit from the review. It won't make a difference to the kid whose parent did the HW, they, too, can benefit from the review. It WILL mean something to the kids who completed the HW or at least attempted to complete the HW, either because they are good kids or their parents see value in HW and made sure they completed the work. At least have the foresight to realize that encouraging a good work ethic in your students isn't a waste of your time even if the work can't be used to "inform your instruction." Most HW in the lower grades isn't beneficial, I agree, but since you have to send it anyway, that's neither here nor there.
Seriously? I thought you held yourself out here as teacher extraordinaire yet here you are, teaching the kids that their homework has no value. Look, I get that you can't grade very piece of it. Personally, I don't believe in grading hw in elementary school. I sent hw that was intended for practice, not to gauge mastery, and while I agree that I got a better sense of how the students were coming along from in class work, I did still look over their work. It was mostly as simple as a run around the classroom to check that it was complete, along with going over 2-3 randomly selected problems but I did it, even though I'm also not big on elementary school hw.
Do you even realize how similar this is to the OP's situation? joenali is to her admin as OP is to the teacher.
Oh please! No one has yet to tell me how homework will inform my instruction. I send practice hw as well. I use what the children produce at school to inform my instruction. How the eff do I know who is doing the work at home, parents or kids? Great, they do their homework I look to see who turns it in and it goes in the recycle. All class work either gets put in a portfolio or is sent home. Hw is not the end all be all in my room. I even told parents that it's up to them if they want to do it or not!
If you're not choosing meaningful assignments that inform your instruction, don't send home assignments. Only assign homework that you feel is valuable. I don't know what kind of homework you give, so there's no way for anyone to answer that question. Even if the kid is getting help from the parents on the assignment, which in second grade seems par for the course, you'll still see whether or not the parent is instructing his/her child correctly.
I can't believe you collect their homework and piss on it in front of the class before setting it on fire and cackling evilly, joenali. Totally uncalled for.
Sent from my GT-P3113 using proboards
Yes I totally do it in front of them!! Evil laugh!!! Evil laugh!!!! I actually make them do it, with dunce caps on!!
I have a third grader and first grader. They go to public school. Is the curriculum challenging enough for them? No. Do I think they are gifted, no. I have incredible respect for teachers. I can't even imagine trying to differentiate education for 20-25 students. I feel this is like so many posts I read where the parent essentially is trying to shame the teachers and let us know how special their child is. Your son probably does need to read more challenging books. But like other posters wrote, that is on you. Ask the teachers to give him harder books through email and be sure to get him books on your own.
And homework for homeworks sake, I agree, not always necessary but that's assuming parents are supplementing at home. Almost all of my friends supplement at home--that is still saving us the 40K a year in private school for two kids.
I think teachers are in a bind, they need to send some homework home to reinforce effort and what's learned at school but they also know it's not necessary for the younger grades. If they don't send it, parents complain, if they do, parents complain.
Anyway, my goal is to be the kind of parent who gets that almost all teachers at almost all times have my kids best education interests in mind. The lions share, however, is on my eight year old and six year old. Honestly, I am hoping that by treating the teachers as the expert here, my son and daughter will treated more favorably. I don't want to oversimplify it--last year was an example where we didn't have a strong teacher--but we still managed to have a good year because she did care about our son and we supplemented at home.
I hope I can teach them about personal responsibility (and OP I think you have room to grow here) and not let them make excuses. Also I'd rather a child who follows the rules and has a good heart than a kid who thinks he's smarter than the teacher and the parents reinforce it. OP, I am not saying this is you--many of the parents I know IRL act like this. Better for me to get educated on common core or Singapore Math than to be negative to the teachers who do a thankless job for my child and is with them eight hours every day.
And my last pet peeve since I'm really letting it out there, I HATE when parents tell me how their kids are reading at higher reading levels as a way to brag and prove how "gifted" their child is. OMG. One of my worst annoyances. And my kids read fine, I just don't go around touting their reading levels. My parents never knew my IQ or bragged about my reading level. We are fundamentally changing parenting these days and I am so happy when I find a new friend that doesn't get all wrapped up in the competitive parenting. If I were a teacher and I had to listen to parents all day long saying how "gifted" their kids were, it would be rough. Not many kids are truly gifted but more and more kids get in these days BECAUSE of parental pressure. I hope to never be that parent.
This is 100% awesome. A positive attitude towards teachers needs to starts very young and there is so much for all our kids to learn no matter how bright (we think) they are. Most schools have free reading time. Does your child's school not have this?
Post by Doggy Mommy on Sept 30, 2013 23:30:15 GMT -5
Um, assigning homework in elementary school isn't rocket surgery. The kids learned to write paragraphs about informed opinions in school. For homework, they practiced writing a paragraph about an informed opinion. In math they learned a new method of addition. For homework they practiced the new method of addition. They are learning to do homework and turn it in. They also learn to pay attention in class so they know wtf to do for homework. They practice what they are learning. This is not complicated.
E is in private school. One of the main reasons - his math teacher will actually grade his homework. Shocking.
I can't believe homework has no value. Kids learn from practice. The more they practice, the better they become. _
We have a 12 year old in public school.
He gets 100s on EVERY math homework assignment. This was in 6th, and now 7th grade.
In 6th grade, he had Language Arts homework that didn't affect his actual class score. So, he decides for himself, "Why should I complete the homework?" and turns in 3 assignments that are mostly blank.*
*I caught up to his shenanigans, and he had plenty of time over spring break to complete the work - not to change his grades, but to show him he still was responsible for his work. Oh, and at no point did the teacher shoot us an email to let us know what was going on. I had to see it online, and dig the worksheets out of his back pack.
I have a feeling the 12 year old will be in private school, soon.
I teach 8th grade math at a very good private school. I give homework grades based on completion. That is very very important to me. Homework is where they can take risks and make mistakes.
I correct the homework. But I do not give it a grade based on right or wrong. That, IMO, is not what math homework (for the most part) is for. That is where they can make mistakes and learn from them before I start taking off points.
Okay...so I have like 8 minutes before I have to walk the dogs...so...
Homework, as it has traditionally existed, is essentially useless. Practicing the same skills, over and over and over again is useless, once a student has mastered a skill, they have mastered it, no amount of practice will make them better at it. If a child hasn't mastered it they likely need re-instruction, not an opportunity to continue NOT being able to do it.
Interestingly, a lot of the research suggests that at a young age the most useful and meaningful homework is reading. Also interestingly I have heard mothers here openly admit to filling out their child's reading logs when they hadn't read. So, yeah.
As a teacher I didn't mark homework because I didn't know who did it - I am not giving an assessment of student understanding for work that might have been completed by a parent - and trust me, I can tell the difference. If I don't know the kid did the work they aren't getting a grade for it, they get a grade for what they do in front of me, for what I can see, hear or read.
That being said, I did assign homework. Last year my kids had homework about once a week (grade 5), maybe twice. It would generally be some math skill practice. Only once a week because really, as I said above, going home and doing multiplication tables isn't going to make a kid who can do them get better at them, and the kid who can't needs to relearn what multiplication is. The being said, when they did math homework (or any homework), we did correct it as a class. But it wasn't graded, other than for a completion grade.
I did occasionally assign a 'project' for homework, when the kids worked on the project at home and then were graded only for their oral presentation of the project, not the project itself.
I am out of time...but there are some interesting reads below. Joenali is technically correct, homework doesn't inform her practice, it isn't a good indicator of student understanding. What she sees in class is a much better form of assessment for learning, which she can use to adjust her teaching practice.
Okay...so I have like 8 minutes before I have to walk the dogs...so...
Homework, as it has traditionally existed, is essentially useless. Practicing the same skills, over and over and over again is useless, once a student has mastered a skill, they have mastered it, no amount of practice will make them better at it. If a child hasn't mastered it they likely need re-instruction, not an opportunity to continue NOT being able to do it.
Interestingly, a lot of the research suggests that at a young age the most useful and meaningful homework is reading. Also interestingly I have heard mothers here openly admit to filling out their child's reading logs when they hadn't read. So, yeah.
As a teacher I didn't mark homework because I didn't know who did it - I am not giving an assessment of student understanding for work that might have been completed by a parent - and trust me, I can tell the difference. If I don't know the kid did the work they aren't getting a grade for it, they get a grade for what they do in front of me, for what I can see, hear or read.
That being said, I did assign homework. Last year my kids had homework about once a week (grade 5), maybe twice. It would generally be some math skill practice. Only once a week because really, as I said above, going home and doing multiplication tables isn't going to make a kid who can do them get better at them, and the kid who can't needs to relearn what multiplication is. The being said, when they did math homework (or any homework), we did correct it as a class. But it wasn't graded, other than for a completion grade.
I did occasionally assign a 'project' for homework, when the kids worked on the project at home and then were graded only for their oral presentation of the project, not the project itself.
I am out of time...but there are some interesting reads below. Joenali is technically correct, homework doesn't inform her practice, it isn't a good indicator of student understanding. What she sees in class is a much better form of assessment for learning, which she can use to adjust her teaching practice.
there are several people (rugby, booby, que, etc.) who, if i could post a gif (but i cannot), i'd post bette midler singing "wind beneath my wings."
gifted children, the truly gifted children, have a very high rate of life skill/success failure. because they sally through the first years of life thinking that they can outhink everyone and everything and if something is "boring" it's because it's beneath them. eventually, life bites you in the ass on that. i'd rather a "gifted" child who can add in her head be able to break down simple addition and show her work than be able to do complex equations in her head without any explanation whatsoever.
and i'm enormously anti-homework at the elementary levels. i'm just not anti-essential life and learning skills.
I will admit, I did not read all of this because I have no kids. However, I will say that while your child may claim to be "bored" by his homework - guess what, a ton of shit in life is boring, but required. I really don't think my boss would like it if I said that I didn't want to do parts of my job that are boring and not challenging enough for my gifted self.
"I just knew how" is a phenomenal answer from a gifted child that does absolutely nothing to help them in life. Because some day, maybe in 9th grade, maybe in college, maybe in medical school, you won't know how to get the answer. And then what do you do? If you've never had to stop and think about how to reason through something because it was "easy" you are screwed. And oh noes! You might get frustrated! Learning! Not the gifted kids! They aren't supposed to struggle.
/gifted hair flip /99th percentile
This was me. And I was a horrible teacher and tutor and am terrified of having to help my kids with math because I don't know how to explain math, it just happens in my head. I've actually been flamed by someone on ML by saying that I've always known how to do math in my head. Yeah, it works for me but I could never in a million years explain it to someone else.
I've always hated the show your work thing, because there are multiple ways of solving a problem, and I had too many teachers who marked problems as wrong if you didn't do it "their" way, even if you got the correct answer. My precalculus teacher was fond of doing this, and he didn't like the methods the book used. So if you solved the problem the way the book told you to, it was completely wrong. Yes, I learned to solve them his way, but there were a lot of times where I got stuck on homework and following the steps in the book would have been helpful. It was a good life lesson, but not a good math lesson.
I think there is a lot to learn by following directions and respecting your teachers, even if you don't agree. That's just part of life.
This thread has given my justification for simple math, though On paper I would stack numbers and carry over like you're supposed to, but in my head, to add 354 + 123 I would add 300+100=400 then add 50+20 = 70 then add 4+3=7, them add those together. So 477. For mental math, I make less mistakes using this method because I'm not carrying numbers. In school, I was always told that this isn't how you do addition, and it was wrong.
So I think it's nice that kids are being exposed to different ways of getting the right answer. The above method is ideal for mental math, while stacking and carrying is better for large numbers you're solving on paper.