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Don't we all just end up using this? Never do the work something else can do for you faster and more accurately...
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Article Accelerator wrote:
[quote=Onamuji]
[quote=Article Accelerator]
[quote=Onamuji]I wonder whether learning math as an extension of English vocabulary and syntax is more effective than the rote repetition of formulas that we had to do when I was a kid.
No need to wonder: It's not.
It seems a reasonable supposition that treating math as a language might tap into evolutionary/instinctive learning mechanisms in children.
That seems to imply that math is somehow unnatural for humans. I don't think that's the case.
I think that it depends upon the specific kind of math. The concept of zero, for example, seems to be an invention that must be taught (tho as a learned concept it's so easy to pass on that pigeons and rhesus monkeys can learn it). And nobody seems to have an instinct for calculus.
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My 6th Grader has always done well in math but the adults who sometimes help with homework go crazy knowing the answer but chafe at the explaining part or being forced to do the problem in a certain way.
A calculator has been a required tool from the early years, because the schools have always taught more than just to get the answer. I'm in my 40s and you KNOW a calculator was strictly verboten when I was in school because back then all they cared about was the answer.
1) I WANT him to know more than just one way to solve a problem.
2) Being able to explain WHY something is the answer or explain how to do it (i.e. "being the teacher") is an important skill for anyone who might become something more than just a minion working in a cubicle farm.
My 3rd Grader has been doing her multiplication tables this year. She gets quizzed at home and is on the 9s right now. But some of that began last year, and so it's more spread out now as classes overlap. For example, her science homework was vocabulary words and definitions. Maybe for English they talk about science.
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I might be, but certainly don't have much of a problem with Common Core. I know my kids are being exposed to more, and earlier, then what WE got as kids.
Apart from curriculum or methodology, there are also opportunities for schools to teach effective study habits but I suspect that's right now too unwieldy to tackle since not all people study and focus in the same (cookie cutter) ways. I'd love to see it however, because effectively studying and preparing seems to me a magic bullet--get that down and whole bunch of other learning challenges become easier.
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Mike Johnson wrote:
. . . My own son wasn’t drilled properly on the multiplication tables by his third grade teacher; I had to step in and teach him myself. But that’s not because of Common Core, it’s because his teacher should have retired long ago. . .
I learned multiplication tables as a kid by having my mom drill me with flash cards at home. I don't think we had the expectation that there was time in school for rote memorization.
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I remember learning my "times tables" in second grade. We moved in the middle of the year, before we got to 11 and 12. I still don't know those without having to think about them for a minute.
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Whippet, Whippet Good
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When I was in high school and college I had a retail job where the owner had been a rocket scientist. He put people into space, designed the fastest jets of the time... he wrote all the store's software and was clearly very good at math.
We were down the street from a high school, and high schoolers would often come by. One day he started ask them a math question in order to buy. Apparently there had been some issues where the teen customers couldn't figure out how much money to give him to pay for something. So he would ask one question. The number would vary slightly, but it was always something like "What's 48% of 100?".
Most high schoolers couldn't get it. It didn't matter if it was 73% of 100 or 25% of 100, they still couldn't get it.
So he decided to go down to the school and volunteer in the math department. He brought his resume. Keep in mind people trusted him with their lives to design systems that would allow them to travel faster than the speed of sound, or launch them into space. The school said no thanks. He had to have a teaching certificate. A college degree and ~40 years as a rocket scientist wasn't enough for him to even volunteer and sit in a class with a teacher there. They would rather their students not know what 50% of 100 is than have someone with his experience but no teaching certificate help the kids.
