Tuesday, January 17, 2006

FW: John Taylor Gatto (Sudbury School in Houston, Tx)


During the question and answer time at the end of the talk, a tenth grader who attended a performing arts high school stood up and asked what he could do to make a difference? The suggestion: “Create groups of 3-5 students who go to nursing homes and children hospitals and put on free performances…..” I really got the idea that instead of rocking the titanic we could make a difference in a more grass roots – community minded type of way? Not causing a ‘stink’ but DOING what works.

Though he didn’t mean to, I was motivated to stop trying to make things feel and look so official. Why? That’s not working. Form organizations and offer support or build real relationships with people and support each other on a more personal level.

I’m still working these things out in my mind, so I’m sure these thoughts will marinate and make more sense later…….

Rebecca

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. -Roger Lewin

Homeschool Victoria

FW: John Taylor Gatto (Sudbury School in Houston, Tx)

The Sudbury School in Houston invited John Taylor Gatto to speak.  Is anyone familiar with that school?  It is a parent created democratic school where the children plan what they are taught each week.  They don’t turn anyone away and they are in desperate need of donations.  http://www.houstonsudbury.org/

 

One thing that John Taylor Gatto said that stuck out was that, “short answer tests are making us dumb.”  He said that when parents and teachers say, “No thank you, I’d rather not” that maybe that is how we could make a difference?  When he said, “No thank you, I’d rather not” everyone started clapping and standing up.  So I assume that the audience was against testing.  This is Texas after all and most teachers hate having to teach to the test. 

 

“Short answer tests are making us dumb.”  John Taylor Gatto seemed to solve the mystery of WHY Public Schools were making America stupid.  It was like an answer to the problems exposed by John Stossel.  How can short answer tests make us stupid?  That wasn’t a ‘true’ or ‘false’ question so we will have to think about the answer and use sentences and discuss, disagree, explain and maybe change some as we learn.  Make our minds grow.  Oh, we are going to THINK!  See!  We will have to use our brains. 

 

Short answer tests don’t allow us to think.  Retrieving information isn’t thinking.  Recall isn’t thinking.  Being able to discuss, debate, and convince someone of your opinion is really thinking.  Working an idea out verbally or in writing is doing more for your brain than simply answering , “Do you think a short answer test accurately measures knowledge?  Yes or no?”  To think we need the “Why or why not” and the “But Tammy doesn’t agree let’s try harder to explain it or maybe we aren’t finished thinking it out….”  That’s thinking.  Now we can be “man-thinking” instead of “man parroting.”  (Someone find the latin words for those two terms LOL)

 

Why don’t we allow daily Socratic (?) teaching and discussion in schools?  Because there isn’t enough time in the day and real knowledge can’t be quickly evaluated.  In a room full of 22 students how can time be given for everyone to speak?  Short answer tests save time and can be graded quickly and the results seem to please everyone.  It’s like learning in a microwave, only thoughts are half baked and nothing was marinated.  YUCK  But there is no test created that can measure real learning – just retrieval.  A scantron machine can’t think so it has to be fed mindless answers.  Our fast food society has already come to the place where people want learning measured quickly and in a way that they can compare their children to others and say, “Look, he learned something, because it says so right here!” 

 

As Homeschoolers we have the perfect opportunity to do what WORKS in the long run and not get caught up in and not model our homes after a failing method of “education.” 

 

Here is another thing that John Taylor Gatto said that stuck out in my mind.  “The homeschooling movement is the greatest populist movement of the last 2 centuries.”  So, be encouraged!  or scared of rocking the boat? 

 

Public school?  “No thank you, I’d rather not.”  (the “no thank you I’d rather not” quote had a story about someone who ‘said it all the way to jail,’ so there is a bigger story there that I can’t RECALL.  Does anyone remember that?)

 

 

 

Rebecca

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. -Roger Lewin

Homeschool Victoria

 

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Teaching Reading Idea:

Let your child tell you a story. Write their words down on a piece of paper. Let the child (if they want to) illustrate their story. Then let the child read their own words back to you.

Let the child create many books to read. Take printer paper and cut it in half, fold the paper to form a little book. Maybe you could make a cover out of construction paper - the child can illustrate that too.

I think this helps them learn to read - because they are reading their own words.

And making books is fun! You have the crafty stuff, art, reading, and grammar in one swoop.

Just telling a story helps with language - formation of sentences etc.

we use our dining room table for school

Everyone pretty much does their school work at the dining room table in our house.  We have a dry erase board, books, maps, and a computer in our dining room.  Oh, and a fish tank.

 

Yesterday we caught Christian drawing on the dining room table with markers!  At first I got mad and said, “Christian, what are you doing??”  We use these markers for our dry-erase board – not the table! 

 

“It’s ok, it comes off,”  he assured me.  He erased the green scribble with his fingers and sure enough it came off!  I never thought of using our dining room table as a big dry-erase board!  It’s glass, after all. 

 

I told a friend about how the kids were drawing on our glass dining room table with dry-erase markers.  She told me that she knew of someone who would slide a workbook behind a plexi-glass book holder and let her child fill in the answers using crayons or dry erase markers!  The worksheets could be filled out without any marks ever being made in the book!  I thought that if we taped a picture under the glass table that the image could be traced – an image from a coloring book.

 

So today as Matthan works out Algebra problems with a black dry erase marker on the dining room table, Christian draws pictures and makes us guess what they are.  Kelsey is making up some math problems and solving them on her own.  When Matthan needs help with Algebra I can grab a dry erase marker and work out a problem right there on the dining room table with him! 

 

So we use our dining room table for school…..

 

Isn’t that fun?  I never thought of using the dining room table this way!  I guess we could do math on windows too!  Just so the marker doesn’t slip and hit the wall!

 

Rebecca

Teaching Math (number recognition) Idea:

My 4 year old, 9 year old, and 13 year old are playing darts (magnetic not the dangerous kind) right now. We are asking Christian "what number did you land on?" when he hits the board so that he can work on number recognition.

We don't ask him for every throw, or he would catch on, but every few throws and when he lands on a number that might be familiar with, like 1-9.

Anyway, I thought I would share that in case someone wanted to know a fun way to teach number recognition.

Of course, the older kids could keep a running score in their heads or they could add or multiply their HITS to have a total for each throw - to work on that.

What else? I guess you could pretty much use a dart board much like you use the game MUGGINS!

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

factoring trinomials with children

Matthan, my 13 year old, is factoring trinomials again today in Algebra. Remember how to do that? If you are an average person who didn’t major in math or go into pipefitting, you might not remember much about your advanced math courses or factoring trinomials! Don’t worry, it’s perfectly normal to have taken a course in high school or college and then not remember a darn thing after you’ve lived your life in freedom for a few years. Factoring trinomials is when you have something that looks like this:

x(squared) + 6x + 9

and you have to make it look like this:

(x+3)(x+3).

You will remember that a factor of 9 is 3? This is the same thing only with some parenthesis thrown in there just to trip you up. You are finding the multiples of a number only now the number has googely eyes and fangs.

When I asked Matthan, “What number gives you nine when multiplied by itself or 6 when you add it?” or “What numbers when multiplied give you 8 yet when added give you 6,” I realized how elementary basic Algebra really is. It’s all the other stuff that confuses me like the parenthesis and the ‘unknown variables.’ We can all add 3+3 and multiply 3 times 3; add 4 and 2 and multiply 4 and 2, so why do we get all tripped up when we see it in the context of Algebra?

I think I know why. When we were in elementary school we were taught that “X” means to multiply.

3X3=9

We were very impressionable and we accepted that fact and used it most of our little math lives. Then one day, we are told that the very symbol with which we have come to associate multiplication is now an unknown variable. “What?” Then we are told instead of using an “X” you can put 4 in a parenthesis and 2 in a parenthesis and that now means what the “X” meant all those years before. Oh, and your ABC’s are now coming to join us for math class – well, Algebra. We learn one thing and use it all of our lives and just when it becomes second nature we have to give new meaning to old symbols and learn all new ways to do the same old things. Algebra seems to be a whole new world and it’s not peaceful to some of us.

It shouldn’t be new or scary at all. In fact, it’s not new, it’s just playing around and rearranging and expressing numbers that we are familiar with in many different ways. Why did it feel different? Why did we learn that multiplication could be expressed by putting an “X” in between two numbers when the whole time we could have just put those numbers in parenthesis? If we are expecting children to grow up and learn Algebra why don’t we just start Algebra in third grade? Maybe I’ll figure the answer out one day. Until then, we are going to play around with Algebra from the get go.

When I asked Matthan, “What numbers when multiplied give you 8 and when added give you 6,” so that we could factor a trinomial, I looked at Kelsey and thought, “She could do what we are doing!” So, I wrote a trinomial out: “x(squared) + 6x + 9” and under it I wrote two parenthesis with an X in each one like this: (x + ) (x + ) and let her decide what numbers should go after the plus sign. She picked up on this pretty fast!

When I told her that she was doing high school Algebra she became very excited. Her confidence in Math was boosted. I hope that when Kelsey enters the world of Algebra and is greeted by my googely eyed monster, that it won’t be something frightening for her.

She can factor trinomials now because that takes basic elementary math! And of course, as her understanding of math expands so will the complexities of the trinomials.

A few years later, as my daughter was learning how to convert Fahrenheit into Celsius, my six year old was inspired to play around with equations and variables. Here is the post.

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. -Roger Lewin

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Teaching Reading idea - Dictation:

Let your child tell you a story. Write their words down on a piece of paper. Let the child (if they want to) illustrate their story. Then let the child read their own words back to you.

Let the child create many books to read. Take printer paper and cut it in half, fold the paper to form a little book. Maybe you could make a cover out of construction paper - the child can illustrate that too.

I think this helps them learn to read - because they are reading their own words.

And making books is fun! You have the crafty stuff, art, reading, and grammar in one swoop.

Just telling a story helps with language - formation of sentences etc.

Greek and Latin Roots (weekly activity)

Equus = horse (latin) equine

Caballus = horse (latin) cavalry

Hippos = horse (greek) hippology-study of horses (a hippopotamus was literally a "water-horse")

I got these from English from the Roots up vol II. Of course, there are more words associated with each root.

The big children can use the words for copywork, handwriting, vocabulary, and spelling as they write the derivatives and their definitions and thesmaller children can draw a picture to illustrate the meaning.

We usually just take one root a week, but we took these three for the past two weeks.

Rebecca



http://www.homeschoolvictoriatx.com/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HomeschoolVictoria

Darts for Math! Making Math FUN!

Matthan just reminded me that for many throws you are required to multiply your hit by 2 or three and the whole game you are adding your totals. A family game of darts could be educational for all age levels. An older child could keep score for the younger child who is focusing on recognizingthe numerals.

I know that when we play darts with Rodney he is able to keep a running total of everyone's score in his head. He played darts competitively and I bet that helped his brain store those numbers that way! He got used to doing math in his head and keeping a total for multiple sets of numbers. Mental math! So a game of darts will work on more than just multiplying andadding - there is something else going on!

And you are doing a family activity and teaching (modeling) taking turns....

Hey! When you guys catch yourself or your children learning on accident share your ideas!

A family game of darts can help with number recognition:

My 4 year old, 9 year old, and 13 year old are playing darts (magnetic not the dangerous kind) right now. We are asking Christian "what number did you land on?" when he hits the board so that he can work on number recognition. We don't ask him for every throw, or he would catch on, but every few throws and when he lands on a number that might be familiar with, like 1-9.

Anyway, I thought I would share that in case someone wanted to know a fun way to teach number recognition.

Of course, the older kids could keep a running score in their heads or they could add or multiply their HITS to have a total for each throw - to work on that.

I guess you could pretty much use a dart board much like you use the game MUGGINS!