Precise speech is critical in math.

Here something just posted on twitter:

My first grader's INSANE Common Core math problem that literally requires 48 steps!

Here's the picture:

 

Now, I know Jack Diddly about teaching kids that young, but I do know this: They're not stupid ... but every kid in the room will read that and struggle a bit on the vocabulary. The font choice will explode the dyslexics' minds (I can barely get "birthday", and "edch" took me a second because the ascender on "a" makes it look too similar to a "d". Yeah, that says "each".)

It's cuetsy and I guess that's okay for first graders.

BUT

When you say "12 classmates", you are directly, explicitly and literally saying that there are 12 other people in the room; Glenda is the 13th student.

Precision in your language is critical. Clear and correct problem statements are essential.  These kids are barely in their comfort zone and you're pitching curveballs and changing it up with high heat?

This is precisely where kids develop their fear of mathematics, where they learn that they don't know how to read it, and where they learn to dread trying word problems because the words don't mean what the kids think they mean.

The teacher doesn't have a clue as to how dangerous this little problem can be.

Kids get confused when they try to understand and keep getting corrected for something that is actually incorrectly stated. Kids get frustrated when you say "at least 10" when you mean "more than 10" and then you don't acknowledge that 10 is valid for one but not the other.

They wind up just getting by and letting the confusion (and the understanding) flow right on past and out the window. Too much of this and we will have lost another generation. It's the fault of this and the next five elementary-level math-phobic teachers.

Thanks for nothing.

It's not Psuedocontext, it's just wrong.

Credit for the Bad parts, too.

There are many errors in the packaged, bought and paid for, courses from Florida Online. Unfortunately, the "developers" seem to have taken that "Beta" software approach ... if it isn't "Threatening-the-President-bad", then we won't bother fixing it.

Take this problem, from the Semester Exam:

Triangle ABC is congruent to triangle DEF. In triangle ABC, side AB measures 9, side BC measures 3x+18, and side CA measures 7. In triangle DEF, side DE measures 9, side EF measures 2x+26, and side FD measures 7. What equation would help you to solve for the side length of BC and EF? Explain your reasoning using complete sentences. (10 points)

At first blush, you say "They're congruent. BC is congruent to EF, so 2x+26=3x+18. Done."

What's the big deal?

Solve it.

Pretty easy ... x = 8.  So the sides of a triangle are 9, 7, and 42. Shit.

Any student who takes that obvious next step, and thinks for more than a second about a different topic just studied, i.e. comparing sides of a triangle and scissors theorem, is now convinced he's done something wrong.

It's not Psuedocontext, it's just wrong.

Technology - Interactive with what?

Technology is great.

Technology is the wave of the future.
Technology is a tool, allowing us to do more.
But so far, technology doesn't seem to be helping with the whole "Interaction" thing.

We'll have to figure this thing out before it kills us.

Every kid, staring at a screen.

More staring ... but at least he's not letting his head fall over.

Ah, now the teacher is watching them stare at screens. So META.

Staring in a circle.

Seriously, Rocketship Academy? This is Edutopia? This cubicle-farm with rows of cells?

We have to do better.

Putting everything on wheels and moving them around daily so the "teacher doesn't even know where to stand" isn't going to improve things much.

Yeah. They get enough at home. Mindlessly fiddling with crap isn't education.

See, lecture isn't a bad thing, in moderation, and when done well. But changing to Khan Academy lectures on the computer to replace the teacher's lectures in the classrooms isn't much of a fundamental shift.

Your guidance counselor spent untold time arranging the schedule so you and your unique teacher skill-set could be present at the same time as the students who needed that exact same set of knowledge and ability. Use the time. Be the teacher.

Leave the screen time for when you and the other kids aren't around each other. FLIPping the classroom is fine. Assigning the Khan for outside work is fine. Watching them day after day, huddled in their solitary confinement of a sensory-deprivation cubicle with walls to block sight of other students, headphones to block the sounds of other students, and a computer to overwhelm all thought ... isn't education and isn't an improvement.

No matter what Rocketship might say.

Maybe a quick glimpse of my road will calm us down so we can be objective about this.

Nice.

I hate it when smart people are wrong in public.

Ordinarily, this guy is correct, but this time he screws up:

"If you went to elementary school in the US, you almost certainly learned about the order of operations."

No, you didn't.

What he should have said was, "If your elementary school teacher was incompetent in math, she taught you this."Which is why we need to seriously rethink the training of teachers in this country.

"If you went to elementary school in the United States (or much of the rest of the world), you almost certainly learned about something boringly called the "order of operations"- a set of rules for whether or not you should do multiplication before addition or addition before subtraction to get the right answer on your math test.

Except, you don't always get the right answer, or even, one answer - I mean, is 8-2+1 equal to 5 or 7? and is 6/3/3 equal to two thirds or six? - the problem is, focusing on the order of operations can lead to ambiguity and obscures the real, underlying, and often beautiful mathematics."

 

FAIL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9h1oqv21Vs#

Consultant = insultant

And SMBC wasn't even talking about education.

"Best practice", anyone?

Teacher Training?

"Mr. C, I want to be teacher."
Then your entrance exam is to decode this.  If you can make sense of this, you are ready to be a teacher.

h/t to Pissed Off!

On a scale of 1 to 10, these are funny.

So, there's this magic dust called "Math Teacher Magic Scale Factor" ... it makes things really big. Sometimes too big.

Wordy Rubrics and the Search for Higher Thinking

From Jay Matthews comes a tale of an AP teacher who was told by his principal that

“I am not opposed to multiple versions of a test or quiz; it is standard operating procedure for every type of testing program,” the principal said in an e-mail to me. “Instead, I would prefer that teachers use more rigorous assessments when possible, that require written responses and higher levels of thinking. In addition to being more challenging and requiring a sophisticated skill set, these types of assessments are also more difficult for students to copy.”

This has got to be the biggest line of bullshit ever perpetrated on teachers ... that multiple choice is bad and that long answer, essay questions require higher levels of thinking, are more challenging and require a high skill set.

Phooey.

Anyone take the AP math test? How about the SATs and the SAT IIs? How about the Praxis content tests? How about all those college courses? The difficulty and the skill set have more to do with the teacher than the format.

But then, most administrators have never taken actual tests before. They don't understand that I can make a very challenging multiple choice test or an easy one, a challenging calculus essay test or an easy one. I can make questions that take an entire page to answer, that have objective measurement, that take very high skill sets to finish and that bring out the best in my students. Or I can make one that uses a rubric full of things like this from a teacher automatic rubric maker website:



Can someone tell me the difference between a "Good Solid Response with a clear explanation" and a "Complete Response with a detailed explanation" and, while you're at it, perhaps you can explain why being correct is only one of 6 equal parts? Why the intense need for a visual or sketch or for counter-examples? And the "Goes beyond the requirements of the Problem" is a beautiful way of saying that the kid doesn't know beans for what he's doing but he sure is good at typing. Please don't tell me to use a better rubric -- they all seem to suffer from this rot.

Give me the AP scoring method every time. This rubric stuff is utter crap.

Education 3.0 and Trying to sound Intelligent.

I'm not sure how to interpret this ... I mean, it's not software. eSchool News would like me to know that there's a next level of educational amazingness and superlitude:

"eSN Special Report: Education 3.0 -- How some schools are taking 21st-century teaching and learning to the next level"

Does this mean we've successfully passed through Education 2.0, Education 2.1, Education 2.1011, Education 2.SP1, and Education2.SP2?

I think I'll wait for the next release before implementing any changes and upgrading my software.

Worst Food Ever.

The "Worst Food Product Ever" May Have Been Found

By Meg Marco,Thu Feb 26 2009,

Could it be the worst food product ever? It does have 1170% of your daily cholesterol per serving. Mmmm.

I seem to recall a discussion here a couple-three days ago about schools serving really bad food to their students. I admit defeat. Nothing is worse than this, not even mystery-meat sandwiches or elephant scabs.

h/t to NYCeducator