Parent Involvement – Understanding How Education Policy Affects Curriculum

<img src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=e6df11b0-f172-4665-90b8-f7efb7373c35&size=original" style="border-bottom: 1px solid; border-left: 1px solid; margin: 10px; width: 205px; float: left; height: 120px; border-top: 1px solid; border-right: 1px solid" />All but five states have adopted the Common Core Standards.  If you have a student in one of these states, your children likely will be taught under new curricula in the fall.  If you haven’t explored the documentation at the Common Core website, here is some incentive from Hung-Hsi Wu’s Statement of Support, <a href="http://www.corestandards.org/assets/2010_6_10_WU.pdf" target="_blank"> “How Good are the Common Core math Standards?”:</a> “CCSS gives precise mathematical guidance on how to develop [the twin pillars that support algebra I, rational numbers and similar triangles] in grades 5-8.  The detailed description of the grade-by-grade progressions of both topics is unprecedented.” “Professional development in mathematics requires immense funding and real expertise.  At the moment we seem to have neither.  So we must be willing to work our way up from scratch.” Professor Wu earned his PhD in mathematics at MIT, started teaching at UC Berkeley in 1973, and has been actively involved in math education for twenty years.  You can find links to numerous articles he’s written <a href="http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/" target="_blank">here</a>. Professor Wu's assertion concerning the lack of preparedness of teachers to execute the new standards in the classroom is a real wake-up call.  Public school systems’ professional development budgets have taken a significant hit in the economic downturn.  Not many districts will have the resources to prepare teachers to the degree required to implement these standards well. The clock continues to tick while schools figure out how to implement the new standards.   At the same time that schools must implement the mathematics standards, they are challenged with implementing new English Language Arts curricula.  I’ll visit the ELA Common Core another day. . .
1/18/2012 10:58:48 AM
(JTD)

A Squishy Circuits Kit for the Holidays

<img alt="Squishy Circuits Kit" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=4e20ebe3-ff22-4bc1-bd68-fa749a7e381a&type=image&size=original" style="width: 164px; height: 205px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />This is even better than a Chemistry Set!  Well, it’s at least as good (colored LED lights, wires, and play-dough – how cool!). It probably suits a wider age range of kids for the combination of safety and depth of understanding than a chemistry set does too.  I think kids as young as kindergartners would be able to “get” some of it, but it’s not so baby-ish that it wouldn’t interest a middle-schooler. <a href="http://www.tabup.com/AfterSchoolers/TalkAbout/squishy-circuits-this-summer-definitely" target="_blank">I wrote about Squishy Circuits earlier in the year</a>, intending to gather all the materials and do the activities with my kids over the summer.  But as Robert Burns wrote, “The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men Gang aft agley.” The project requires two different types of home-made play-dough.  The only slightly odd kitchen ingredients are distilled water and cream of tartar (you can substitute lemon juice) for the conductive dough and 1 tsp. of alum (optional) for the insulating dough (it’s a preservative used in home pickling).  I found both the alum and the cream of tartar in the rack of small McCormick containers in a large supermarket. What stumped me was the trip to Radio Shack for the hardware (LED lightbulbs, wires, etc).  Radio Shack seems like the kind of store that would have inventory problems, and a partially successful trip would beget more errand running. I suppose I could have ordered through their website easily enough, but I found some of the hardware listed on the Squishy Circuits website pretty unfamiliar as I didn't play around with circuit boards like my baby-boomer brothers did. Well, I’m thankful that the creators of the Squishy Circuits website have come to the rescue.  The current website has more detailed materials descriptions, links to sources, and even a kit that they’ll ship to you for a reasonable price (click <a href="http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/BUILDINGCIRCUITS.htm" target="_blank">here</a> and scroll down to the Squishy Circuits toolbox to click on links to suppliers).  The <a href="http://squishycircuitsstore.com/kits.html" target="_blank">Squishy Circuits Store</a> has single components too.  Hurrah!  I’ve ordered the kit and know I’ll have the right stuff. P.S.  I still need to do some homework so I can point you to some good explanations of the properties of circuits you can teach your kids with this activity.
11/22/2011 1:29:34 PM
(JTD)

"New Math" Video

"The important thing is to understand what you're doing rather than to get the right answer."
10/20/2011 11:54:28 AM
(JTD)

That Was the Math that Was

<img alt="Tom Lehrer, Nerd and Satirist" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=636e7ac4-7674-40f1-812f-a9a7d2d281a3&type=image&size=original" style="height: 202px; width: 205px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />Tom Lehrer's tune, "New Math," sounds far too much for comfort like many public school districts’ math presentations.  But Lehrer was being sardonic.  It’s amazing we’re still dealing with defenders of constructivist math after all these years.  Tom Lehrer recorded this performance in 1965.  Sometimes when one of the kids has brought home a math textbook, I have to revisit “New Math” to keep my sanity.   My dad had the vinyl album of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/That-Was-Year/dp/B000002KO7/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1319124325&sr=8-6" target="_blank">That Was the Year that Was</a>.  I think I was about ten years old when I started listening to it in the seventies.  The richest line is at the 1:00 mark, though the line just before that is great too.  I like the part about making do with more primitive aids than a blackboard “as they say in the Ed biz.” 
10/20/2011 11:51:19 AM
(JTD)

Art of Problem Solving -- Alternative to Khan Academy?

<img alt="Art of Problem Solving " src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=c9522669-fcd8-4cc0-8d85-b46b674a6d5b&type=image&size=original" style="height: 133px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />I’ve been taking a look at the Art of Problem Solving as a possible supplement to middle and high school math. AOPS has an <a href="http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Company/history.php" onclick="window.open(this.href, '', 'resizable=no,status=no,location=no,toolbar=no,menubar=no,fullscreen=no,scrollbars=no,dependent=no'); return false;">impressive history</a> and has developed a number of different media to support math instruction. I still think <a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/" onclick="window.open(this.href, '', 'resizable=no,status=no,location=no,toolbar=no,menubar=no,fullscreen=no,scrollbars=no,dependent=no'); return false;">Khan Academy</a> is excellent and find Sal’s video instruction to be clear. Khan’s Singapore instruction (currently available for Grade 3) corresponds to the textbooks and workbooks available at <a href="http://www.singaporemath.com/Default.asp" onclick="window.open(this.href, '', 'resizable=no,status=no,location=no,toolbar=no,menubar=no,fullscreen=no,scrollbars=no,dependent=no'); return false;">singaporemath.com</a>. At this time, Khan does not offer online exercises that match the videos directly. Most Khan Academy videos have no corresponding textbooks as Khan’s point has become the development of a system accessible from anywhere in the world. The Art of Problem Solving curriculum looks especially promising to me. After teaching online classes for a year, the AOPS team decided that it is beneficial for students to have textbooks in addition to online materials. The level of detailed instruction in the textbook sample pages is impressive. And the textbooks are supported by a full solutions manual (not just an answer key). The online problems I viewed on the <a href="http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Alcumus/Introduction.php" onclick="window.open(this.href, '', 'resizable=no,status=no,location=no,toolbar=no,menubar=no,fullscreen=no,scrollbars=no,dependent=no'); return false;">Alcumus</a> section of the website are extremely well documented. Upon submitting an answer (or even selecting the “I give up” option), Alcumus provides a clear explanation of the solution, the location of related readings in the textbook, and links to applicable video lessons. One of the strengths of Khan Academy is the flexibility to jump in to finely target areas in which a student needs help. The Art of Problem Solving offers the structure of a textbook as well. For a parent who grew up with traditional instruction, the Art of Problem Solving provides a solid hybrid of text-based and computer-based learning to use with students.  
8/26/2011 1:27:03 PM
(JTD)

Khan Academy Countdown to September

<img alt="Click on Khan" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=cd961ec4-8ef4-4312-a5dd-16487f871efa&type=image&size=original" style="height: 153px; width: 205px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />We’re just back from vacation and have exactly three weeks until the start of school. I did let the kids slack off on the math. They spent a lot of time playing music, improving their swimming, and reading. It’s been a pretty well-rounded summer so far. Now it’s time to limber up for math. Five days of math each week until school starts.  We’ve been using <a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/">Khan Academy</a> and want to use it more regularly this school year. Our school's math program has not provided the kind of practice that supports mastery. I was excited to see that Salman Khan now has a <a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/#singapore-math">series of lectures for Singapore math</a> on his website. He’s starting with Grade 3 of the California Standards edition. I assume this is in support of a classroom pilot project Khan is doing in California. There are no directly corresponding exercises on the Khan website for the Singapore lectures, but the workbooks are available <a href="http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_Stds_Ed_s/134.htm">here</a>. For now, we’ll probably stick to the original Khan arithmetic exercises and supplement with an occasional viewing of one of Khan’s Singapore videos. I think they do support the development of number sense. If our schools were using the Singapore curriculum, I would prioritize these videos. With limited time for math practice, I think the regular Khan videos with exercises are more valuable than these new videos for our family.  
8/16/2011 12:24:50 PM
(JTD)

Grammar and Comp for Middle School Students

<img alt="Sentence Diagram" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=fd4b26b4-1bfd-4b80-8ac9-9ebf380d041c&type=image&size=original" style="height: 144px; width: 205px; border-width: 2px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Susan Wise Bauer’s soon-to-be-published program, Writing with Skill. It looks like a superb textbook / curriculum for teaching students how to organize their writing and how to begin to apply style to it. These are essential skills I want my children to have when they begin high school. But Writing with Skill is a writing program, not a grammar one. I had not scrolled down in Ms. Bauer’s blog, so I completely missed <a href="http://www.welltrainedmind.com/resource-roundup/new-grammar-and-writing-resources/">her post</a> about the other program she is publishing soon. Advanced Language Lessons is the set of books that continues the Complete Writer series. The format of the early Advanced Language Lessons workbook closely resembles the first four student workbooks of that series (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_17?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=writing+with+ease&sprefix=writing+with+ease">Writing with Ease</a>). One thing I love about the Writing with Ease workbooks is Ms. Bauer’s use of fine examples of writing, taken from fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She includes samples from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_26?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=child%27s+history+of+england&sprefix=child%27s+history+of+england">A Child's History of England</a> by Charles Dickens, The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, "Rain" by Robert Louis Stevenson, and many other wonderful works.  These samples have served me not only in teaching the skills in a particular day’s lesson, but in providing recommended reading for my children. Ms. Bauer’s selections are far superior to the official lists chosen by the Language Arts committees at our public schools. Now the trick is to get the children as excited about working with these programs as I am.  
7/27/2011 2:50:16 PM
(JTD)

Middle School Writing -- Writing with Skill

<img alt="Twain Writing" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=a14eb927-6656-4e93-8ca9-51d933a7074a&type=image&size=original" style="height: 159px; width: 205px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />For the past few years, I’ve been using Susan Wise Bauer’s Writing with Ease to supplement my children’s English Language Arts work. Our school system has embraced such techniques as “journaling” [sic] and Daily Oral Language (or, as I call it, practicing errors – see some interesting points of criticism about that <a href="http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/grammar_mechanics/why-daily-oral-language-d-o-l-doesnt-work/">here</a>). I’m unimpressed by what the school system plans for middle school, and I’ve been somewhat panicked in my search for instructional materials to take my children beyond the fourth grade. I remembered reading that Bauer was working on a writing curriculum for the middle school years. I’ve been checking her website for a while and was beginning to worry that she might not complete it in time for me to use with my kids. I was relieved when I checked her blog and found <a href="http://www.welltrainedmind.com/resource-roundup/writing-with-skill-the-full-table-of-contents-and-first-seven-weeks/">this recent entry about Writing with Skill</a>. In her blog post, she offers generous previews of both student and parent materials. The downloadable pdf versions of the full books should be available  for purchase in the fall. I like Ms. Bauer’s focus on organizational skills for writing. I believe that learning how to write is learning how to think. I was curious to see what approach the prestigious Scarsdale, New York school district applies to middle school writing. Their website states: "The Writing Program offers students a variety of writing experiences arising from the study of literature and includes both creative and analytical writing. As students move through the grades, greater emphasis on expository writing prepares them for the demands of their later academic lives." My early impression of the Writing with Skill approach is that it will meet, and probably exceed, Scarsdale’s express goal of solid preparation in expository writing.  
7/15/2011 5:39:11 PM
(JTD)

No Contrived Themes. You Have to Do the Math. Some Inspiration from Vern Williams.

<img alt="Vern Williams, Math Educator" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=6988b388-c557-40e1-be9e-29164e3f53a9&type=image&size=original" style="width: 130px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left; height: 171px;" />Summer is going too fast already. We’re already in the middle of the second week (public schools around here end late). I let the kids use the first full week of summer afternoons to rest their brains. They’ve been doing a lot of reading, playing with Legos, and enjoying the long 4th of July weekend. Now it’s time to regain some momentum for doing math work. It will only get harder if I wait any longer. We have only eight full weeks of summer left for developing computational automaticity and number sense. The only way to develop these strengths is through practice. Even though I know how important it is for the kids to do this work now, while they have the time, I do feel the cultural lure to give my kids some kind of idealized carefree summer. When I need to remind myself of the reasons why it’s important to remain disciplined about giving the kids summer work, I read what <a href="http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/a-diploma-in-10th-grade/#vern">Vern Williams</a> has to say about <a href="http://www.mathreasoning.com/Middle_School_Teacher_Teaching/middle_school_teacher_teaching.php">the philosophies that inform public school curricula</a>. Mr. Williams writes that he does his “very best to shield [his] students from the effects of educational fads, political correctness and anti intellectualism that we experience everyday in public schools. “ While I’m grateful that each of my children has had a few teachers of Mr. Williams’s ilk, I’m afraid that there aren’t enough to go around.  
7/6/2011 3:46:53 PM
(JTD)

Worldwide Perspectives on Education in Video Form

<img alt="Global" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=892dc242-d614-4215-a44c-0dc12aa0351b&type=image&size=original" style="height: 202px; width: 205px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" /> A few months ago, <a href="http://www.tabup.com/AfterSchoolers/TalkAbout/71bd49aa-dde7-4600-9507-6030b4432952">I wrote about the value of teaching cursive</a>. I found an excellent documentary about the role of graphisme in the French primary school curriculum. The documentary was part of a series called “How do they do it in . . .?” produced by the UK Department for Education. I found the collection just before it was discontinued due to austerity measures and regretted not being able to view more of the 15 to 45 minute films. Fortunately, a <a href="http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/toolsandinitiatives/teacherstv/">number of other websites </a>now are hosting the content on their servers. I’ve watched several of the approximately 25 videos via <a href="http://www.schoolsworld.tv/series/how-do-they-do-it-in">Schoolsworld TV</a> and found them extremely well done. I find that many educators like to refer to a 21st century education. Usually they bring this up while they discuss increases to technology spending, even as they cut library, modern language, and history programs. I find it quite helpful to hear the perspectives of educators in other parts of the world as I figure out how much and what kind of supplementing I need to do for my children.  
6/28/2011 6:01:18 PM
(JTD)

Children of Tiger Moms

<img alt="Paper Tiger" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=5cebb8ac-3145-47ed-9927-9ab7b6955bfa&type=image&size=original" style="height: 208px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />With the end of the year crunch here, I’ve been thinking about the whole Tiger Mom thing again. Burn-out is hitting both kids hard, making it difficult to motivate them to do what they see as extra. They’ll need that last week at school (1/2 days, mostly) to really relax before their summer of music camp plus sessions of Khan Academy, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Writer-Writing-Ease/dp/193333925X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308143165&sr=8-1">Writing with Ease</a>, and foreign language study with me.  It's hard for children to work this hard when so many of their classmates don't do anything academic outside of what is required for school. Today I came across Wesley Yang's article "<a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/asian-americans-2011-5/">Paper Tigers</a>" in New York Magazine. Yang writes about what he calls the bamboo ceiling, the phenomenon of Asians not being well represented in top leadership positions. He attributes this partly to the cultural value of not promoting oneself in many Asian families and relates Sach Takayasu’s story of learning how to navigate a career track at IBM. Takayasu tells of her parents saying to her, “‘Don’t create problems. Don’t trouble other people.’ “and asks, “How Asian is that? It helped to explain why I don’t reach out to other people for help.” Takayasu’s upbringing sounds familiar, and it's not restricted to Asian families.  My parents, who were upper Midwesterners and grew up during the Great Depression, taught me the same thing. It’s not that they were wrong in emphasizing the acquisition of knowledge and competency over self-promotion. They just took it to the extreme, conveying the idea that people who self-promote are using over-confidence to cover up a lack of substantive qualities. What’s worse, they conveyed the idea that teachers were too important to bother.  I don't want my kids to internalize the idea that to ask for help is imposing on their teacher. As my older child approaches middle school, she’s learning firsthand that her public school classroom is not a meritocracy and that pushiness is rewarded. This is why it’s so important for kids to have sources of academic validation other than their classroom teacher and their own parents. When they work toward the kind of mastery that isn’t supported in many elementary school classrooms, they can start to see the intrinsic reward of really knowing how to do something and the extrinsic reward of seeing real effort recognized by others.  
6/15/2011 9:30:57 AM
(JTD)

Kids, Don’t Quit Your Day Job

<img alt="Call on Me" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=9b8f0b25-3e6a-4b8c-9e13-70c2e6256dc3&type=image&size=original" style="height: 133px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" /> One of the challenges of afterschooling is helping kids understand why they have to learn what they consider to be extra math, writing, or any other subject on top of what they’re learning in school. I’ve been truthful with my children, telling them that the way their public school teaches math and writing will not prepare them well enough for high school and beyond. I don’t want them to think that school performance is unimportant though. As much as administrators deny that there is tracking, teachers track all the time.  It shows in the way they respond to individual students. Teachers of elementary-aged children have enormous influence in shaping students’ senses of their abilities and goals, certainly in the short term. An example is the gender gap in math. In spite of evidence that it has closed in performance on standardized math tests, <a href="http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/math-gender.html">only girls from select environments are participating and achieving in significant numbers in international math competitions</a>. In spite of all the platitudes about developing creative thinkers, students who think in ways outside of the methods prescribed by canned curricula present a time suck to teachers. Exceptional teachers are able to accommodate students who academically deviate by encouraging them to bring outside experience to their work. For some teachers, the demands of differentiated instruction are too great. For them, there’s mostly sticking to the script. Part of making the choice to continue to send children to public school includes recognizing that as parents we have limited control over what kind of teachers they will have. It’s up to us to help them learn how to make the work they do outside of school enrich what they do in school. I compare the children’s challenge to the challenge of an artist not to think of himself as a wage slave. Etsy artist Summer Pierre’s book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Artist-Office-Creatively-Survive-Thrive/dp/B003TO6DN2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306939864&sr=8-1">The Artist in the Office</a> is about <a href="http://www.etsy.com/storque/read/dont-quit-your-day-job-the-artist-in-the-office-7149/">ways “to keep your mind fresh and to change your experience at work.”</a> Her ideas about work life apply, perhaps even more deeply, to school life.  
6/1/2011 10:53:43 AM
(JTD)

A Summer Start to a Reading Life

<img alt="Witch of Blackbird Pond" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=bd4342ca-ed6c-47aa-9a01-aa2b90446060&type=image&size=original" style="height: 146px; width: 103px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" /> As important as summer is for filling in the gaps in math and writing perpetrated by my children’s school (especially starting in fourth grade), my instinct tells me the most important thing I can do for them this summer is to protect a significant amount of their reading time. My kids’ generation is the first in our family to have opportunities for organized summer activities. I was lucky to grow up in kid-friendly neighborhoods with sidewalks for skating and safe streets for biking. But with a lot of us to help through college, my parents couldn’t afford swim memberships and day camps. We were at home a lot, and Northern Virginia summers were brutal for playing outdoors for much of the summer. So, while my friends and I usually spent a few hours a day playing in one another’s basements where it was cool, there were still many hours to fill. Many of them were filled with books. Even if I wasn’t as ambitious as LA Times critic David Ulin in my summer reading choices (<a href="http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-ca-summer-david-ulin-20110522,0,5578659.story">Wow! Vonnegut after fifth grade!</a>), I usually read pretty good books: Across Five Aprils; Rascal; The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Reading fine writing during those elementary school summers fed my ambition to take on higher level books. My scrounging around for something to read often led me to my older brothers’ bookshelves too. As for my own reading this summer, I’ll be reading Ulin’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Art-Reading-Matter-Distracted/dp/1570616701/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1306167277&sr=1-1">The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter</a>.  
5/23/2011 12:17:49 PM
(JTD)

Squishy Circuits – This Summer, Definitely!

<img alt="Squishy Circuit" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=fa3d3293-90f3-4991-af1b-3266c59cd59b&type=image&size=original" style="height: 158px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" /> I’m sad to say I don’t expect this cool contraption to show up on a Smartboard at my local elementary school anytime soon. These types of units tend to be outsourced to the PTA-sponsored Cultural Arts assemblies, where maybe five students will get a hands-on experience. Luckily, Professor AnnMarie Thomas at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota has created a <a href="http://courseweb.stthomas.edu/apthomas/SquishyCircuits/index.htm">Squishy Circuits website</a> with instructions, sources of materials, and videos that will walk me through doing this activity with my kids in my kitchen. I figure we’ll spend one afternoon making the two types of dough and another afternoon playing with electricity.  Actually, I love how Prof. Thomas introduces good engineering lab practices even though this is an activity for young kids. In the coming days, I’ll provide some background of the properties demonstrated in this activity.  
5/11/2011 1:01:25 PM
(JTD)

Not Just Pretty Letters -- More on Cursive

<img alt="Graphisme - French Cursive" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=871d11b5-de3e-4098-8b3c-7044802cac67&type=image&size=original" style="height: 119px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />The New York Times weighs in on <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28cursive.html?scp=1&sq=cursive&st=cse">the question of whether the ability to write in cursive</a> is what educators like to call “a twenty-first century skill.” One interesting point the article raises is the danger that the rejection of cursive will lead to the loss of connection to archival material. One college student recounts her experience of not being able to read her grandmother’s journal. If you can, watch this British short documentary video* about <a href="http://www.teachers.tv/videos/france-teaching-handwriting">France’s approach to teaching cursive</a>. I find the philosophy of the art teacher particularly inspiring. He talks about the learning of graphisme leading to pleasure in the whole writing process.   *Note: The teachertv website is going offline as of tonight due to austerity measures affecting the UK Department of Education. Their videos will be archived elsewhere at a later date. I’ll try to link to their new location when they become available.  
4/29/2011 1:10:19 PM
(JTD)

When I Think I Might Want to Homeschool . . .

<img alt="William Morris Print" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=91065e0b-19f2-4246-b7f4-d672673e4a04&type=image&size=original" style="height: 155px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />     There are dark afternoons when I think that the school day has been squandered yet again, and the kids are bogged down in ridiculous test drill homework that eats their time. Those are the days when I’ve given serious thought to abandoning institutional schooling altogether.      Yet, there are days when Ms. M reminds me of why my children often benefit from having an experienced classroom teacher. Both of my children have been fortunate enough to be placed in Ms. M’s class. She is my son’s teacher for second grade; when she was teaching third grade, my daughter was in her class.      Ms. M and I have talked about the importance of exposing children to good writing, and over and over, she demonstrates her commitment to this idea. She has built an excellent classroom library and is expert at readers’ advisory. A few years ago, the booklists Ms. M gave parents at back-to-school night were reasonably good, improved by her notations. A few years later, she distributed a list that clearly is her own. Many of the titles are from the old list, yet she’s added many she’s found since that time. She has organized the titles with goals and growth in mind. She’s even included titles for the years beyond second grade.      When my son brought his copy of D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths to school, Ms. M asked to borrow it for a while. It turned out that she wanted another copy in the classroom so that she could do an enrichment project with my son’s reading group. She later told me that it was one of the best group project experiences she had ever done with a small group.      At a recent parent / teacher conference, I asked Ms. M for recommendations of non-fiction writing. I had been having trouble finding well-written books at my son’s reading level. My opinion was that many non-fiction books for second grade have too little text and too many sidebars that break the flow of the writing. Ms. M picked up a Bobbie Kalman Lifecycle book and showed me what to look for in a non-fiction book at my son's reading level. She explained how the illustrations in the book enhance the text and are part of the language acquisition process. She pointed out how the author has chosen the illustrations in these books to help structure the textual information in a mindful way. They are not mere decoration. Without Ms. M, I may not have come across this explanation at the right time, when my son became ready for and needed this next level of non-fiction.      Ms. M also recommended that I make sure that my son is reading poetry. She is looking forward to doing a poetry project with the children based on non-fiction poems. Ms. M somehow manages to provide depth of knowledge in spite of the time challenges of a test-driven curriculum and a ridiculous amount of interruption to class time by the school administration and PTA.      She even sends each child a poem on a beautiful postcard for their birthdays (see photo above for this year’s).  
4/15/2011 12:48:37 PM
(JTD)

It's the Curriculum, Stupid!

<img alt="No Spiral Math!" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=5af0b64b-e2f0-4648-a055-7b74bd9aaa13&type=image&size=original" style="height: 154px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />     That third bullet reads, "Avoid Any Approach that Continually Reviews Topics without Closure."  This finding by the National Mathematics Advisory Panel is from 2008.  2008!  And we still have administrators and teachers in many districts fighting to defend spiral math curricula in elementary schools.      Go <a href="http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/mathpanel/reports.html">here</a> to find links to the final report and the reports of the various task groups.  For now, I'll limit myself to reading the Report of the Task Group on Conceptual Knowledge and Skills.  The group “affirms that Algebra is the gateway to more advanced mathematics and to most postsecondary education.” The report goes on to outline the skill benchmarks of algebra readiness (p. 3-40), skills not mastered using a spiral approach. By the time our school system gets around to implementing a change away from the spiral math program they adopted in 2006, it will be much too late for my kids.      The longer my kids are in school, the more I agree with NYCHold’s <a href="http://nychold.com/parents0.html">Special Advice for parents</a>: Parents should not assume that the educational system will sufficiently provide for their children's needs, even if their children get good grades in math.      While my children have had some teachers who recognize the deficiencies of spiral math and do their best to mitigate those deficiencies, they just do not have enough time during the school day.  With more and more experienced teachers taking retirement packages, I won't rely on teachers who attended schools of education in recent years to do more than parrot the "conceptual understanding" constructivist mantra.  The big fourth grade “testing year” is exactly the year that students should be gaining proficiency in long division and learning to understand the relationship between fractions and decimals. That just won’t happen with the math programs that the majority of school systems outside of California and a few other places are using.  
4/7/2011 12:02:34 PM
(JTD)

Cursive . . . Something Else I’ll Have to Teach this Summer

<img src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=f257dec5-6d4a-498b-9f3e-f0322bb11fc3&type=image&size=original" style="height: 210px; width: 175px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />     As the chances of my son being assigned to an “old school” teacher next year plummet in the face of retirement packages for those at the top of the pay scale, I realize that the chance of him learning and using cursive at school is quite low.  After all, the state doesn't test for it.      Apparently, school administrators don’t consider writing in cursive to be a 21st century skill. It just doesn’t have the bling that mastering bubble tests and keyboarding has. <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_17710389">One teacher quoted in the Denver Post</a> said, "The kids don't like to write cursive, and it's always an argument every year. I decided it's a battle I don't want to fight anymore. “ Gee, I wonder what else the kids don't like to do – practice long division? learn grammar?      A “technology teacher” who taught kindergarten for twelve years said “to make it required, I can't see that — because keyboarding is so much faster." Right – faster is better. Textspeak is faster too. Why bother to learn to write at all, then? There are plenty of textspeak translators available for the twentieth century types. I wonder how exactly knowledge of kindergarten pedagogy translates to being qualified to evaluate whether or not teaching cursive is useful for cognitive development anyway.     Having earned my B.A. during the eighties, I remember well the transition from composing essays in long-hand to composing at the keyboard. I could feel that the thinking process differed greatly, though I didn’t think through why it was so.     <a href="http://www.uis.no/research/article29782-51.html">Recent research in Norway by Anne Mangen</a> offers a clue:           "Mangen refers to an experiment involving two groups of adults, in which the                 participants were assigned the task of having to learn to write in an unknown alphabet, consisting of approximately twenty letters. One group was taught to write by hand, while the other was using a keyboard. Three and six weeks into the experiment, the participants’ recollection of these letters, as well as their rapidity in distinguishing right and reversed letters, were tested. Those who had learned the letters by handwriting came out best in all tests [my emphasis]. Furthermore, fMRI brain scans indicated an activation of the Broca’s area within this group. [The Broca’s area of the brain is associated with speech production and language comprehension]. Among those who had learned by typing on keyboards, there was little or no activation of this area."      It appears that keyboarding is not multi-sensory for acquiring language in the same way handwriting is. But then, as one teacher in our elementary school has been candid enough to admit, current early grade school curricula are not developmental.  
3/29/2011 12:55:21 PM
(JTD)

This is Not the Salman Khan You Are Looking For

<img alt="Salman Khan (the Bollywood actor)" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=806b9e31-d272-40fc-875a-6947d1268a61&type=image&size=original" style="height: 146px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />      When our family first started getting serious about afterschooling, we knew that workbooks alone weren’t quite what we what we wanted to supplement math. We needed a solution with more depth, but neither hiring a tutor nor taking the kids to a learning center was it. With music lessons, foreign language study, and sports already occupying time outside of their school day, one more thing outside the house just would have been too much.        We’ve been using the <a href="http://www.khanacademy.org/">Khan Academy</a> arithmetic and developmental math videos and practice exercises for almost the entire school year (only on the weekends and long breaks). They provide the organized direct instruction that the kids need and are not getting in their public school’s spiral math program. We plan to use these videos and exercises this summer as insurance that the kids have mastered what they need to know.      For some background on Khan Academy, please see Khan’s TED presentation <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html">here</a>.  
3/23/2011 5:41:50 PM
(JTD)

How the Tiger Moms Get It

<img alt="Books and Music" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=e70155ed-64ad-4efd-bafc-208a4cfd0927&type=image&size=original" style="height: 129px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />     The April issue of The Atlantic includes articles by Caitlan Flanagan and Sandra Tsing Loh that likely will resonate with those of us who have recognized the need to afterschool. Much of the brouhaha about Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has focused on examples of Chua’s extreme (and self-satirizing) parenting incidents, but what I think Chua deduces is the extent to which parents have to foster the academic discipline necessary for the work they'll be doing once they get to a university.  With everything else schools are doing, they typically are not in the business of doing that.       Flanagan points out in her <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/the-ivy-delusion/8397/">essay</a> what Chua’s book acknowledges: most of today’s children “can’t have a fun, low-stress childhood and also an Ivy League education.” I think it’s pretty obvious that this idea carries far beyond the Ivy League to include highly selective public university and private polytechnic university education.       <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/04/sympathy-for-the-tiger-moms/8399/">Loh's piece</a> is both laugh-out-loud funny and poignantly insightful. Having been raised by parents with high expectations and attaining the physics degree from CalTech, she finds sometimes all of that leads, as it did for one of her CalTech classmates, to “tweaking the computer system that controls the flow in beer guns at Applebee’s.”  
3/16/2011 10:34:49 AM
(JTD)

Practice, Practice, Practice

<img alt="Carnegie Hall" src="ImageHandler.ashx?id=411ca713-a5a5-4fcc-a5f3-e1d266dd07b5&type=image&size=original" style="height: 157px; width: 206px; border-width: 1px; border-style: solid; margin: 10px; float: left;" />"With patience and repetition, the seed blossoms.” -Shinichi Suzuki The Suzuki method is what opened my eyes to what has been lacking in my children’s public school experience. As my school-aged children have been working through “balanced literacy” and “spiral math,” I have seen how curriculum developers and school administrators have eroded direct instruction of basic skills and mastery of those skills through practice. This is why I have decided to afterschool. My family’s experience with the Suzuki method clearly illustrated the value of working with content in a deep and sustained way. The music in Suzuki Book 1 is simple, yet beautiful. The children experienced it with different senses again and again. First, they listened to it with their ears. Next, they sang it with their voices. Then, they played it with their hands. Finally, they saw it with their eyes. Each new song introduced a new element to learn. Their piano teacher built their skills in steps, only moving ahead when each song and skill was mastered. This type of skill-building appears to be neglected and haphazard in the way math and writing is being taught through standard elementary school curricula today. Most parents born in the fifties and early sixties recited times tables and practiced solving problems we copied from textbooks using rules shown to us by our teachers. We heard, spoke, wrote, and memorized content. Most children today experience math instruction that is peppered with introductions to concepts that don’t make sense for their developmental stages. For example, the headings in my second-grader’s math workbook include “algebra” and “probability.” It doesn’t make sense to teach this way in a discipline that is as hierarchical as math. Parents resort to hauling their kids to Kumon and Kaplan to try to address the skill-building deficiencies in the curriculum. Websites of schools where administrators and teachers speak derisively of “drill and kill” post links to math practice websites such as Kitten Match and Batter Up Baseball. Knowing that current classroom instructional structures and inefficient homework will not contribute to mastery of certain skills, I have been finding resources to ensure that foundational skills do not fall through the cracks. I will continue to add to the Resources section of this tab as I find more.      
3/14/2011 12:26:20 PM
(JTD)

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