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Agreed. It's both confusing, frustrating and discouraging for kids who are not developmentally ready for that type of abstract thinking to try and do it anyway. It makes them feel stupid when in reality the stupidity comes from the standards not being appropriate.
The reasoning behind this was so that the US could "catch up" to other countries.
IMHO it's going to create just the opposite and we will continue to fall in PISA standing.
Last October I helped give "assessments" to kindergarteners.
I was shocked. It was 6 pages long with 3 pages of "sight words". Then there were sentences, paragraphs, math. All this to 4 and 5 year olds.
Most of them "lost it" by page 3. They got bored, didn't want to do this anymore, wanted to color, play games, go to the bathroom, etc.
Developmentally a 4 or 5 year old does not have the attention span to do a 6 page assessment.
And these poor kindergartner teachers have to give it to them several times a year to monitor progress.
Anyone asking what the big deal is in common core, clearly hasnt had the luxury of experiencing it..
At a glance, that looks like they're overcomplicating things. But actually, I use the same methods when I'm doing math in my head. But what's the point in making the poor kids write it all down every time?? The whole point is to help them do math in their head!
I think you're probably wasting time by making students explain absolutely everything they do.
Why on earth do you need to explain why 17 + 25 = 42?? That's just a waste of time IMHO.
The common core sex ed curriculum is flat out pornographic and essentially posits that anything and everything sexual is fine and good. I got a very big problem with that.
Common core has a bunch of political bias in it apparently. Pro-Democrat, anti-Republican bias. I got a problem with that.
What I'm most interested in is results. I got a big problem with common core if the majority of students are doing worse and not better. Poking around, I'm finding pretty mixed results. But if you can clean the garbage out of it and common core actually gets good results then great! But if some teacher has an even better system that gets even better results then that teacher should be free to do it better.
Choosing to spend our time doing something that is useful, like learning the multiplication tables vs doing something that is not useful like trying to muddle through a set of math problems that are not developmentally appropriate seems like a smart idea to me. If we start an assignment and find it to be absolutely ridiculous and we choose to instead focus on doing something worthwhile related to the topic at hand, I don't see what would be wrong with that. Learning is the end goal. The teachers have no problem with us choosing to do alternate activities when needed.
NBP - sorry about your illness and thanks for confirming my suspicions that the thing was designed by theorists. If your supposition that the testing is not suitable for the ages of the children being tested this program is an abomination. Why would anyone as isolated as professor want to inflict this kind of intellectual torture on children?
What is the big deal about abstract thinking? Abstract thinking is a learned perversion for the people that can and have the time to do it. Many of us spend our time thinking about actual problems created by actual situations requiring immediate and always correct results.
Any problem involving a variable is "abstract". You do it everyday and don't even think about it.
The reasoning behind this was so that the US could "catch up" to other countries.
IMHO it's going to create just the opposite and we will continue to fall in PISA standing.
Last October I helped give "assessments" to kindergarteners.
I was shocked. It was 6 pages long with 3 pages of "sight words". Then there were sentences, paragraphs, math. All this to 4 and 5 year olds.
Most of them "lost it" by page 3. They got bored, didn't want to do this anymore, wanted to color, play games, go to the bathroom, etc.
Developmentally a 4 or 5 year old does not have the attention span to do a 6 page assessment.
And these poor kindergartner teachers have to give it to them several times a year to monitor progress.
That is a lot for Kindergarten. It's not appropriate. I feel bad for the kids and for the teachers. I agree with you that I think it will backfire.
NBP - sorry about your illness and thanks for confirming my suspicions that the thing was designed by theorists. If your supposition that the testing is not suitable for the ages of the children being tested this program is an abomination. Why would anyone as isolated as professor want to inflict this kind of intellectual torture on children?
What is the big deal about abstract thinking? Abstract thinking is a learned perversion for the people that can and have the time to do it. Many of us spend our time thinking about actual problems created by actual situations requiring immediate and always correct results.
Thanks, but I'm ok really. Part of the extended leave is that I have (or rather had) 2 years of sick leave built up. When this school year ends and I officially retire I'll still have a year. I couldn't see leaving that much money on the table.
Abstract thinking follows from the concrete and becomes part of problem solving and planning ahead. The problem is that when it's now being done means that the vast majority of kids' brains aren't ready yet. And the scores will reflect that and then there will be more rounds of recriminations.
Choosing to spend our time doing something that is useful, like learning the multiplication tables vs doing something that is not useful like trying to muddle through a set of math problems that are not developmentally appropriate seems like a smart idea to me. If we start an assignment and find it to be absolutely ridiculous and we choose to instead focus on doing something worthwhile related to the topic at hand, I don't see what would be wrong with that. Learning is the end goal. The teachers have no problem with us choosing to do alternate activities when needed.
More useful? You can't understand how to do his math problems so you decide its not useful? Are you worried he might become smarter than you are or something?
More useful? You can't understand how to do his math problems so you decide its not useful? Are you worried he might become smarter than you are or something?
More useful? You can't understand how to do his math problems so you decide its not useful? Are you worried he might become smarter than you are or something?
LOL. Using the new methods will take them twice as long to get the answer.
I taught my son traditional Math when he couldn't do his Algebra homework and got several angry emails from his teacher for teaching him the "wrong way" because it wasn't her way.
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