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Many of the teachers I see spend a great deal of class time on projects such as posters and other drawings. This has its place in the earlier grades but what purpose does it serve to do a poster in high school English? What information are these students remembering from that exercise? The goal seems to be classroom work that can be hung on the walls. I've noticed a trend where there seems to be an inverse correlation between the amount of classroom projects hanging on the wall and the amount of actual learning taking place.
YES.
To put it bluntly, teachers do nothing but p*** away students' time. It is laziness and selfishness passing, somewhat self-righteously, as education.
The time is the key thing. Let's say it takes -- not including a trip to Michael's or Joann's for craft crap, which many parents and children don't have time or money to do anyway -- a grand total of two hours to make a poster for Romeo and Juliet. The student has had to cut out or download various pictures (e.g., Justin Bieber as Romeo) and glue or tape them on, has had to select letters and coloring, has had to attach certain words like "Antagonist" to a picture of (let's say) Draco Malfoy as Tybalt and so on. I think two hours is actually a conservative estimate.
Now, let's take that same two hours and do something old-school with it:
1. Read Spark Notes and related sites for two hours
2. Listen to a Khan Academy lecture or related discussions (a documentary on Romeo and Juliet, for example) for two hours
3. Make flash cards (e.g.,"Romeo = protagonist, motifs = love and violence, imagery = light and dark, love and war) and have someone quiz you for two hours
4. Take five pieces of paper and summarize the major events of each act for two hours.
Or simply...
Watch a film of Romeo and Juliet (according to Shakespeare, it should take exactly two hours)
Here's the final test: When that two hours is over, quiz both students over the content of Romeo and Juliet. Which one did better? Which one understands the play more effectively?
Point proven. How in the world can teachers continue to justify wasting students' time and resources by stupid, content-light projects? How can parents continue to say that it's worth it for their students' time to be utterly wasted this way? I don't understand it at all. If it were once in a blue moon the week before Christmas break where little work is going to happen anyway, I could maybemaybemaybe get it -- although that makes it no less of a waste of time. However, it's not once in a blue moon. It's ALL THE TIME.
Quote:
I subbed recently in an 8th grade math class. The students were below average since this was a class that the brightest students had taken in 6th grade. The students were taking a test. As I walked around the classroom, I was asked a question by a couple of students. They were having difficulty with the following problem. "What is √25?" They had a problem because they could not find the square root function on their calculator. It was obvious that some of these students had no clue what a square root is, but if they could plug the square root sign and 25 into their calculator they would have the answer. The calculators where so complicated that even though the square root function was obviously on the calculator, you had to look for it. When I collected the tests, I noticed that several students had given 625 as the answer.
They want to go outside and play. Maybe the students are discovering that most of the stuff they memorize in high school is worthless. Romeo and Juliet is a play that is meant to be acted or watched, never to be read.
They want to go outside and play. Maybe the students are discovering that most of the stuff they memorize in high school is worthless. Romeo and Juliet is a play that is meant to be acted or watched, never to be read.
Go back and read Charles Wallace's post. Where does he mention reading Romeo & Juliet? He states:
Quote:
1. Read Spark Notes and related sites for two hours
2. Listen to a Khan Academy lecture or related discussions (a documentary on Romeo and Juliet, for example) for two hours
3. Make flash cards (e.g.,"Romeo = protagonist, motifs = love and violence, imagery = light and dark, love and war) and have someone quiz you for two hours
4. Take five pieces of paper and summarize the major events of each act for two hours.
Or simply...
Watch a film of Romeo and Juliet (according to Shakespeare, it should take exactly two hours)
Maybe your reading comprehension is not that good since you totally missed the point of the discussion.
Look, our society and educational systems want the student to be able to put A together with B to come up with new information C on their own. They didn't have to memorize C - they derived it from A and B. And this is good. But what many are missing is that we can't get them to memorize either A or B, much less put them together to form C. It's very difficult to teach stoichiometry when my students can't remember the steps to convert from grams to moles or vice versa. It's very difficult to teach nomenclature when they can't remember either what the charges of the ions are or how to derive it from the periodic table.
No matter what you say about higher order thinking skills, the memorization of certain bacis facts is absolutely essential. If this is missing, forget the rest.
Look, our society and educational systems want the student to be able to put A together with B to come up with new information C on their own. They didn't have to memorize C - they derived it from A and B. And this is good. But what many are missing is that we can't get them to memorize either A or B, much less put them together to form C. It's very difficult to teach stoichiometry when my students can't remember the steps to convert from grams to moles or vice versa. It's very difficult to teach nomenclature when they can't remember either what the charges of the ions are or how to derive it from the periodic table.
No matter what you say about higher order thinking skills, the memorization of certain bacis facts is absolutely essential. If this is missing, forget the rest.
For whatever reason, education places priority on active learning, critical thinking and communication over plain old rote learning. They feel that if students practice those 3 they will master the subject and have a deep understanding of it. (That's the think tank mumbo jumbo they tell us).
Now, given the three..critical thinking, communication and active learning, how many students are going to "discover" the quadratic equation on their own with a deep understanding of it ?
In our quest to bypass rote learning we sometimes make the topic overly complex and taking twice as long to teach a concept. Two days of playing with manipulatives, drawing pictures, etc. and THEN the formula for the Pythagorean theorem is taught to the students. But during those 2 days of "critical thinking" the kids are struggling with the area of a square which they should have "mastered" in previous grades rather than be thinking about how those 3 squares and their areas lead you to "discover" the Pythagorean theorem.
Rote learning is shunned in education in favor of critical thinking.
That might work in Social Studies and Reading but it's an epic fail in Math and Science.
Quick recall through rote learning has it's place in all subjects. Critical thinking should be left for high school or college. Critical thinking in K-8 ? How if they have no prior knowledge or basis on which to evaluate ? How if they can't recall prior learning to move forward to build upon it ?
I think we need to throw in the towel on critical thinking, call it a failure and go back to rote learning in K-8 so that students have the foundation knowledge and skills.
Quick recall through rote learning has it's place in all subjects. Critical thinking should be left for high school or college. Critical thinking in K-8 ? How if they have no prior knowledge or basis on which to evaluate ? How if they can't recall prior learning to move forward to build upon it ?
I think we need to throw in the towel on critical thinking, call it a failure and go back to rote learning in K-8 so that students have the foundation knowledge and skills.
I disagree with this. It is true that you must have a foundation of knowledge on which to build critical thinking, but that does not mean you should neglect critical thinking even in the earliest grades.
New practices have more to do with what teachers don't do, than what they do. For example, when pupils struggle with problems, it is important to step aside to let them work out solutions with their classmates rather giving them quick answers.
To really teach critical thinking, you have to:
Ask open-ended questions.
Categorize and classify.
Make decisions.
Find patterns. (This one is particularly appropriate for math).
It's still important for your child to know his multiplication tables, but it's just as vital for him to know how and when to use them.
I disagree with this. It is true that you must have a foundation of knowledge on which to build critical thinking, but that does not mean you should neglect critical thinking even in the earliest grades.
New practices have more to do with what teachers don't do, than what they do. For example, when pupils struggle with problems, it is important to step aside to let them work out solutions with their classmates rather giving them quick answers.
To really teach critical thinking, you have to:
Ask open-ended questions.
Categorize and classify.
Make decisions.
Find patterns. (This one is particularly appropriate for math).
It's still important for your child to know his multiplication tables, but it's just as vital for him to know how and when to use them.
But we're not doing that. We're hand holding them and leading them every step of the way.
Then we hand them formula charts and calculators to make it easier.
Then we wonder why they cannot grasp abstract concepts because they are still struggling to figure out what 6x8 is with test books covered in bubbles as they count.
And I don't need to fully understand and master with a deep understanding of the Pythagorean theorem.
It's held its ground up to more rigorous minds then myself and has stood the test of time.
I learned the equation, memorized it and we did the 3 squares thing and moved on.
In later college classes we did go deeper and by then the mind was able to fully grasp it.
You first learn that you cannot take the square root of -1.
Then you learn about imaginary numbers.
Now you can never say "No" when asked if you can take the square root of -1.
Critical thinking and understanding at the college level means more than trying to instill that in 10 year olds.
And that is what I am seeing today.
Last edited by HappyTexan; 12-18-2012 at 11:56 AM..
For whatever reason, education places priority on active learning, critical thinking and communication over plain old rote learning. They feel that if students practice those 3 they will master the subject and have a deep understanding of it. (That's the think tank mumbo jumbo they tell us).
Now, given the three..critical thinking, communication and active learning, how many students are going to "discover" the quadratic equation on their own with a deep understanding of it ?
In our quest to bypass rote learning we sometimes make the topic overly complex and taking twice as long to teach a concept. Two days of playing with manipulatives, drawing pictures, etc. and THEN the formula for the Pythagorean theorem is taught to the students. But during those 2 days of "critical thinking" the kids are struggling with the area of a square which they should have "mastered" in previous grades rather than be thinking about how those 3 squares and their areas lead you to "discover" the Pythagorean theorem.
Rote learning is shunned in education in favor of critical thinking.
That might work in Social Studies and Reading but it's an epic fail in Math and Science.
Quick recall through rote learning has it's place in all subjects. Critical thinking should be left for high school or college. Critical thinking in K-8 ? How if they have no prior knowledge or basis on which to evaluate ? How if they can't recall prior learning to move forward to build upon it ?
I think we need to throw in the towel on critical thinking, call it a failure and go back to rote learning in K-8 so that students have the foundation knowledge and skills.
I think you're absolutely right -- or if not throwing in the towel on the critical thinking, at least acknowledge what you and the previous poster have both said: that in order to build a wall, you need some bricks.
Let's take a math example. When we are expecting students with little math experience to intuit (somehow) the Pythagorean theorem, is it safe to say that we are expecting them to have the same kinds of mathematical insights as Pythagoras? Is that not basically asking them to be math geniuses and innovators...but without actually putting in the time?
Wouldn't that be a lot like expecting me to play basketball like Lebron James just by watching Lebron...but without putting in hoursandhoursandhoursandhours of training, practice, drill, training, practice, drill, and so on? We would never assume that a good basketball player can be created by sending untrained amateurs to the NBA.
But we're not doing that. We're hand holding them and leading them every step of the way.
Then we hand them formula charts and calculators to make it easier.
Then we wonder why they cannot grasp abstract concepts because they are still struggling to figure out what 6x8 is with test books covered in bubbles as they count.
And I don't need to fully understand and master with a deep understanding of the Pythagorean theorem.
It's held its ground up to more rigorous minds then myself and has stood the test of time.
I learned the equation, memorized it and we did the 3 squares thing and moved on.
In later college classes we did go deeper and by then the mind was able to fully grasp it.
You first learn that you cannot take the square root of -1.
Then you learn about imaginary numbers.
Now you can never say "No" when asked if you can take the square root of -1.
Critical thinking and understanding at the college level means more than trying to instill that in 10 year olds.
And that is what I am seeing today.
From what I'm seeing -- and this is coming from the perspective of an English teacher -- there are two kinds of math students:
1. Students who get insights about the algorithm from seeing it once or twice: they see it and they immediately understand some of the important implications and applications of the algorithm. They "get it" at a deep level.
2. Students who need to learn by rote and see the same damn problem one million times before something coalesces and finally "clicks." I am this learner. It took me only about one bizillion times of multiplying a number by a decimal before I realized how percentages really work and what their relationship to fractions was. Did I add that I was deep into my twenties when this epiphany occurred, and it occurred because I was grading student papers?
For me, the "discover the Pythagorean theorem" approach would have left me nothing but utterly confused because I wouldn't even have had the rote factoid of "A squared plus B squared equals C squared" to fall back on.
(Both classes can have a note card with the formulas/equations on them, as I'm more concerned with them knowing how to use them.)
I think this may be the problem. What's more important: knowing how to use a formula or knowing what a formula means? A formula is not just something we mere mortals were given from on high to mindlessly plug numbers into. A formula reveals a truth about how the real life components of a formula interact with one another to produce a desired outcome. To understand the formula by memory is to understand the whole concept of what truth the formula expresses. Plugging in the numbers will come easy only if they understand the formula enough to have it memorized.
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