Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think kids in the early grades forget most of what they learned over the summer and teachers spend most of the first quarter reviewing last year's material before they move on.
Are you sure they don't retain the information? I think it's a matter of recall not retention.
In my case, it would just create more breaks for kids to forget material over.
Stop trying to force kids to fit your desires. They don't recall the information because of you and the system you use. Who's the leader the teacher or the students?
The leader is at fault not the followers. If some of the students aren't learning it's the teacher's fault. And the problem is the parameters the teacher must work within. I bet if teachers had the power to make kids stay locked in a closet all weedend if the kids didn't do their homework, all homework would get done.
It's a matter of the teacher doing what is necessary to "cause" a child to *want* to get involved and learn. The problem again is parameters that must be followed.
Why can kids recite lines from movies they see once on the weekend? Why can kids use a computer better than most teachers? Why can kids figure out ways to get around most any rule? Why can kids learn to use household chemicals to get high?
The reason kids can do those things is because they are intelligent. The reason they don't learn their school work is because the teacher can't get them motivated.
If teachers had the right situation they could figure out how to teach almost any child. Optimizing information delivery can make that a reality. Standing in front of 30 kids and giving a lecture will only work on kids that learn best by listening to a lecture. If we have computer systems that could deliver information in 10 different ways but required the same amount of effort from the teacher to produce one way, then you could reach 10x the number of students.
The newer teachers were all over the "everyday math" because it was 'new and innovative" the more experienced teachers knew better.
There has to be a balance between "new and innovative" and plain old basic skill learning.
The thing you're not taking into consideration is the experienced teachers were fools for prematurely discounting the innovation. Sure the experienced teachers knew the innovation wouldn't work on the kids they taught in the *past*. But only a fool would conclude that it wouldn't work on a new set of students. Unless they tried it at least once with those new students.
How many years does it take for students to be "new". I don't know, but I'm sure students of today need different teaching methods than students of decades past.
One of the things I have fought all year is overuse of ratios. Some kids figured out that in many situations, setting up a simple ratio is a shortcut. Operative phrase SOME SITUATIONS. I had a significant number of students who copied this and just used a ratio for everything whether it worked or not.
You're fighting the "overuse" of ratios?!
You know the kids want shortcuts, they put forth effort to use them even when they don't work. So, you're considering banning it?
Beat those brats into submission. How dare they follow more effecient methods of getting their work done!
Education needs to realize that it is equally wrong to have all philosophers or all worker bees, and allow each student to go through all the right doors to what he is best suited to be.
It alarms me that in your comment, it sounds like you are equating 'functional' with 'controllable'.
Civilization is not a static state, maintained by controls. It is a continuum that follows those who cannot and should not be controlled, the Jeffersons and Teslas and Shakespeares and Ibn Batutas and Lao-Tzus and Ghandis, who somehow became free to take the body of existing knowledge and form it into wisdom. Civilization flourishes when education fails to control the pupils.
Exactly! You should play to their strengths. If you focus on their weaknesses the best they can become is mediocre.
Or maybe - just maybe - the parent would become engaged in the child's future and help them learn to appreciate schooling?
And I realize Africa as a whole is not doing well, but man, every documentary I see shows those kids WANTING to be in the classroom and working hard to learn because they realize how valuable an education is!
You know the kids want shortcuts, they put forth effort to use them even when they don't work. So, you're considering banning it?
Beat those brats into submission. How dare they follow more effecient methods of getting their work done!
It's not a more efficient method in the situations when it leads to a wrong answer!!! It's not appropriate when you get a wrong answer. My students who use it don't seem to realize what adjustments must be made in order to use it in some situations.
I'm considering banning it because they don't think it through. They see a situation where three things are given and they're asked to find a fourth and they run with ratios. WITHOUT thinking. There are times when this works and times when it doesn't. It works for mass to mole conversions and for simple mole to mole conversions using balanced equations. It does NOT work for mass to mass conversions using balanced equations (unless you make an adjustment which, IMO, is more work than the other way) yet I see this ILLOGICAL extension made all the time. Take the simpliest possible solution and apply it to everything.
So, yes, I'm thinking of banning use of ratios. I teach a different method that always works because you keep stringing things out until you get the right units. The kids hate it because they don't like writing the units but the units are what drive the method. What they want is one equation (the ratio) to plug into to get an answer. What they need to do is think it through and most won't.
I would guess that only about 1/4th of my students who defaulted to the ratio method managed to do it right. It CAN be done but, IMO (which is why I don't teach it), it's more complicated and requires a good understanding of the material to pull off. There are times when I really have to stop and think how I'd do some of these problems with a ratio. Which is something my kids don't have when they are first learning the material.
Since I'm getting to the point of no longer caring. I would have to say. If you are struggling to find a way to teach the students ratios and you feel it's best to keep knowledge from them go ahead ban ratios.
Stop trying to force kids to fit your desires. They don't recall the information because of you and the system you use. Who's the leader the teacher or the students?
The leader is at fault not the followers. If some of the students aren't learning it's the teacher's fault. And the problem is the parameters the teacher must work within. I bet if teachers had the power to make kids stay locked in a closet all weedend if the kids didn't do their homework, all homework would get done.
It's a matter of the teacher doing what is necessary to "cause" a child to *want* to get involved and learn. The problem again is parameters that must be followed.
Why can kids recite lines from movies they see once on the weekend? Why can kids use a computer better than most teachers? Why can kids figure out ways to get around most any rule? Why can kids learn to use household chemicals to get high?
The reason kids can do those things is because they are intelligent. The reason they don't learn their school work is because the teacher can't get them motivated.
If teachers had the right situation they could figure out how to teach almost any child. Optimizing information delivery can make that a reality. Standing in front of 30 kids and giving a lecture will only work on kids that learn best by listening to a lecture. If we have computer systems that could deliver information in 10 different ways but required the same amount of effort from the teacher to produce one way, then you could reach 10x the number of students.
The system is at fault!
WRONG. Education is FOR THE FOLLOWERS. If education is for the student, why wouldn't they have a vested interest in their own educations? THEY have to have a vested interest in their own educations. What is in bold is, IMO, what is really wrong with education in the United states. If you go to other countries that teach well you will find that it is the students who are held accountable for learning. They consider it a privlidge. Because they have a vested interest in their own educations, they demand high quality teachers. Here, we just tell the teachers that it's their job to teach. Ok, I'll buy that. It's my job to teach. Now you tell me, Whose job is it to learn??? Until our students have the kind of vested interest in their own educations that we see in other countries, we can argue around in circles and get nowhere. Taking responsibility for your own learning is critical to getting a good education.
Edited to add: In other countries, when a student is struggling, they get tutoring, see their teacher and even attend Saturday school to catch up. They don't sit back and blame the teacher for not catering to them. What you fail to realize is that I cannot tailor what I teach to every student in my classroom. I teach 150 students a day, 30 at a time in 50 minute blocks. I have, at best just over one and a half minutes for each student. PLUS it's a life skill to know how to get what you need from any system.
I'm a why person in a what world. I can't memorize and regurgitate to save my soul. I still don't know my multiplication tables. I could have sat back and blamed the teachers or I could figure out what works for me. I did the latter and graduated at the top of my engineering class. My need to understand in order to do served me very well in engineering school. It serves my students who actually want to learn well too. No so much for the ones who just want me to give them step by step instructions so they can do the problem, get the check mark and move on. I frustrate them but I think that's a good thing. I want them outside of their comfort zone. I want them to grow.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 06-28-2011 at 11:52 AM..
Since I'm getting to the point of no longer caring. I would have to say. If you are struggling to find a way to teach the students ratios and you feel it's best to keep knowledge from them go ahead ban ratios.
You're missing that I don't need to teach this with ratios. I teach dimensional analysis and that works everywhere except where you'd be expected to know a formula. Since dimensional analysis works and I have too many students who can't even tell when they can and cannot use a ratio, it makes sense to not have them use ratios to do the problems I'm talking about. I don't teach using ratios to solve problems because doing so requires enough of an understanding of the material to know when you can and when you cannot use them. Dimensional analysis is unit driven. Unless you've made a math error, you're going to get the right answer if you cancel to get the right units...but students seem to hate working with units even when they set up ratios which is another way to get things wrong using a ratio even when the ratio would work.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's not appropriate when you get a wrong answer. My students who use it don't seem to realize what adjustments must be made in order to use it in some situations. 
