Terrified of homeschooling (again) March 27, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, math, older son, younger son.Tags: acceleration, gifted, gifted education, homeschooling, homework, older son, younger son
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Last night, the younger son was working on his math homework while I sat next to him and played sudoku. I’ve found that this is the best way to oversee his homework because I don’t really pay attention to what he’s doing unless he asks for help, but I’m close by in case he starts getting frustrated. And really, I can’t concentrate on anything important when I’m interrupted every ten minutes for an explanation.
The younger son has started running into problems with a concept now and again. After he gets so many wrong, the program will switch gears and have him work on something else for a while. Then it goes back and tries the subject again. This happened for the first time a few days ago. He complained, saying it was repeating questions. I told him the program thought he needed more practice. Last night, it happened again.
“Mom, the program thinks I need more practice. But I don’t. I know this stuff.”
“Well, you’ll have to prove it to the computer.” And he answered every question correctly. The fact that he got peeved about repeating questions is a huge improvement from the kid who would avoid doing pretty much anything for fear of getting it wrong…and if he did try and get it wrong, there would be a major emotional blowout to follow. That kid is a distant memory…but was around as recently as six months ago. This, in my mind, is why you need to present challenges to perfectionists.
I’m now anxious for another reason. I really thought the younger boy would slow down in his math progress. Yes, I did up the amount of time he spends from 20 to 40 minutes per day, my reasons for which are elaborated in another post. And he no longer gets everything right. In fact, on his daily practice, he’s usually hitting somewhere between 80 and 90 percent correct answers. But he’s still not really slowing down.
At the end of the year, he’s going to be three years ahead in math. We didn’t expect this, and this puts us past the ‘drop dead’ point where the school can do anything. His school only goes up to 5th grade at his campus. The other campus starts at 6th and goes through the end of high school. Realistically, he’s not ready for that with his reading and writing. So now we’re obligated to keep going with his current math program for the next three years. Because of the structure of the courses, he will have to slow down signficantly. However, we’re still looking at a realistic possibility of him being through algebra 2 before he starts middle school. At that point, we are going to have to see if the school is willing to let him join a bunch of high school students for geometry or precalc…when he’s 12.
I’m nervous about this because of what is going on in his classroom. He’s not participating in the regular math class, but he does work on addition and subtraction drills. His teacher is putting on his report card that he’s ‘beginner level’ in math based on these drills. I really am not worried how he’s doing on this because of the fact that I know he can add two and three digit numbers in his head, even though he still writes some numbers backwards when writing the answers. I am guessing the pressure of timed quizzes, the act of writing, or perhaps lack of interest are causing his poor performance. (Incidentally, while he may not do every problem, all the problems he does are correct.)
I am concerned that teachers in the future are going to look at this and believe he doesn’t know math rather than looking at what he’s accomplished through the online math program. And I’m worried this will have a negative impact on our ability to accelerate him when the time is appropriate. But, mostly, I’m frustrated that so much of the assessment of his abilities rests on judgements of things like basic arithmetic or handwriting when it’s become so obvious to me that he’s got some serious abstract thinking abilities. No teacher is ever going to see that unless they give him some challenging material. (I have to admit that I had no idea until we started down this path with the math program.) Likely, they won’t because they’re so stuck on what I consider to be somewhat superficial things.
Based on my experience with the older son, I guess this is starting to leave me terrified that the younger boy will eventually need to be pulled out of school. I have that thought every time I get a note about some problem at school. Admittedly, most of them are small things that I don’t have to worry about. The thought is sitting just under the surface, though, and pokes an eye out every time something seems amiss.
For now, we’ve decided to just keep him moving through regular school while supplementing math during the school year and language arts during the summer. I imagine that in about 3 years, however, we’re going to hit a pretty serious fork in the road. I’m a person who doesn’t take well to waiting, however, so even now it’s still on my mind a lot.
Leave it to the experts: the homeschooling parents September 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, older son, teaching, younger son.Tags: education, homeschooling, research
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A friend on Facebook posted the following article: What Teachers Really Want to Tell Parents
I agree with some of the sentiment of the article: helicopter parents are damaging to their children. On the other hand, I have enough experience not to buy this line:
For starters, we are educators, not nannies. We are educated professionals who work with kids every day and often see your child in a different light than you do. If we give you advice, don’t fight it. Take it, and digest it in the same way you would consider advice from a doctor or lawyer.
Most elementary school teachers are trained to deal with a room full of children. They are not heavily entrenched in child psychology, learning disabilities, giftedness, or many other things that can affect individual children and their functioning in the classroom. Their training is in dealing with large numbers of average children…a more sophisticated form of crowd control.
I am not trying to be mean to elementary school teachers; I am stating a fact about their education. (I considered becoming a teacher at one point, so I do know what types of classes are required.) The reality is that their education is limited, and they are reluctant to admit that. Now, there are exceptional elementary school teachers out there. I ran into a couple during my youth, and I’ve run into a couple as my children have gone through school. Unfortunately, my experience is that they are also the minority, if not completely rare.
Too often, teachers have told me that “they are professionals,” but they fail to realize that I am the expert in MY child. They will come to me with a complaint about the child’s behavior, and when I give them suggestions on ways to deal with it because, well, they asked, I am told that what I am suggesting is not possible. If these people are professionals, then why are they asking my opinion and, better yet, why are they then telling me they can’t take my advice?!
To add further insult to injury, I more than once ran into teachers who told me that my son’s difficulties in school were because of homeschooling. I remember clearly when the older boy’s third grade teacher said he obviously didn’t remember his math facts very well because he always performed poorly at Around the World…only to be told a couple weeks later by the principal that he’d done exceptionally well during their annual testing and that, “he obviously knows his math facts!” All I could ascertain from this was that the teacher was biased against homeschooling as well as having a poor handle on my son’s actual abilities.
I felt rather vindicated, therefore, reading the results of a scientific study on homeschooling done at a university – that is, it isn’t being done by opponents or proponents of homeschooling and therefore has no reason to be biased one way or the other. It was also funded by the Canadian government.
The study showed that homeschoolers who use curriculum are more likely to be accelerated in their studies relative to their publicly-schooled and unschooled peers when measured by standardized tests. They don’t look at the Big S (socialization), although they mention that schooling is an important form of socialization. (And it’s one that is a very poor form, if you ask me. I am still appalled by some of the things my son heard at school from his classmates.)
They weren’t certain of the factors that led to acceleration, but they mentioned more focused study on math and reading. When I homeschooled, I felt like the topics were more diverse than what my kids have encountered in a regular school. Also, we spent less time doing schoolwork than what my kids spend in a regular day at school…and that doesn’t include homework.
I’m certain that more studies will bear out the same result (in fact, most have), and help parents to be more confident that homeschooling is an acceptable and even superior alternative to a public classroom (and a cheaper alternative to private school). At the very least, I’d be happy if a few teachers paid attention and realized that parents can be as or more effective in working with their own children than the supposed experts.
Homeschooling and Teaching with Brain Rules May 3, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, older son, research, science, teaching.Tags: brain rules, homeschooling, teaching, US History
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As many of you know, the older boy is on a partial homeschooling arrangement. One of the plans this year was to cover US History and then have him take the relevant CLEP exams. (What can I say – I’m a cheapskate, and doing this this way is a lot cheaper than having him take classes at the university.)
We started out the year with three books – a CLEP review book, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and a Patriot’s History of the United States. My thought was that 1) he would see a point/counterpoint in the interpretation of US history by reading the various books, and 2) there would be a decent amount of repetition.
I have definitely been vindicated on the first point. The older boy has really enjoyed reading the People’s and Patriot’s History books because of the fact that they’re rather politically charged. But when it came time to do a practice exam, no dice. He barely passed the exam.
I was nervous about shelling out the money for an exam only to have him fail it (although I imagine that will happen at some point or another), so I tried to think of some way to help. I decided to order the History of the United States video from the Teaching Company. (Before you pass out at the price tag, keep in mind that these go on sale at least once a year and I didn’t pay that much.) The older boy took to them instantly, and it was probably one of the few times this year I didn’t have to nag him about getting his homework done. After getting through the first part, he took another practice exam and earned an A equivalent.
I have read many times that the textbook for a course is where most students get their information. I also have argued with people about this point because, while I use them as references, I’ve only been minimally successful and garnering much information from them. When I have been successful, it’s because I’ve done things like compiled vocabulary lists or extensively used the practice problems…not because I’ve simply read them. On the other hand, I’m very surprised by the older boy’s jump in test score.
I shouldn’t have been. I recently listened to the book Brain Rules. I heard about the book after looking into a class on educational neuropsychology that was using the book for some of its readings. After reading it, I can tell you that I strongly suggest that anyone who functions in any sort of teaching capacity read or listen to it. It has a lot of very good information that educators should, but often don’t, know.
When listening to the chapter of stimulating the senses, I found the explanation for the big jump in scores. It turns out, according to the book, that one of the best ways to get people to remember things is to stimulate multiple senses. Reading by itself is problematic because there is a significant amount of decoding that goes into translating the written word. However, watching a presentation where someone is talking and that speaking is accompanied by visuals, especially if they are animated visuals, will drastically increase memory of the subject matter.
This is undoubtedly the case with my son’s score discrepancies: watching the videos, which include pictures as well as someone speaking, did a lot to boost his memory of the topic matter. (Granted, this was history and not science or math, where I expect a somewhat significant amount of additional practice would be required.)
As a homeschooling parent, this means that I am definitely going to be on the lookout for more high quality videos. Fortunately, I can also find things through places like MIT OpenCourseWare and iTunes U. And this means I will also keep this mind if/when I ever get back into a classroom.
Can young students learn from online classes? April 9, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, math, older son, teaching, younger son.Tags: automated curriculum, curriculum, EPGY, homeschooling, Johns Hopkins, online learning, trent schools
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The New York Times is covering online classes in the ‘Room for Debate’ column. It’s interesting reading the commentary from the debators because at least half of them are talking about online learning in the abstract. That is, they’ve got some ideas about what it should be like but haven’t had much experience with it.
Over the course of my kids’ schooling, we’ve experimented with a lot of different curriculum, some of which has been online. My personal opinion is that online learning is that you really can’t say much about this topic without first defining what you’re talking about. “Online learning” is very vague. Does it mean you’re talking with people online about your homework? Are you working with completely automated curriculum? Do you have feedback from a teacher? You need to know how to answer these questions before giving an informed opinion.
My first experience with ‘online learning’ was not good at all. About 7 or 8 years ago, I enrolled the older boy in an online program called “Trent Schools”. They sent ‘lessons’ on a regular basis which I later found out were simply repackaged sections from the “What Every 2nd Grader Needs to Know”. It was incumbent on me to think of how to explain these things to my son as well as work out ways to practice. Given I could’ve gotten the book and done exactly the same thing, it really wasn’t helpful at all. It sort of embodied the worst aspects of ‘online learning’ – no interaction with other students, no feedback for the student, nothing to practice, no guidance for the parent.
I was burned on the concept, but when the older boy started attending a gifted program in Minneapolis, I was introduced to it again. The program had kids work on several of their subjects using online educational programs. Specifically, they used Rosetta Stone for foreign language and Aleks for math. The first thing I learned (and I suspected this already) is that Rosetta Stone is not great for a beginner. However, once you have a bit of a language under your belt, it may help you improve. I’d use it as a study aid, but not as a curriculum entirely in and of itself. So much of foreign language, to be really good, depends on having a teacher with a good ear who can provide you with feedback. Without that, you’re probably spinning your wheels.
The older son made little to no progress using Rosetta Stone. However, many of his classmates did, so maybe there is some aspect of this that I’m missing.
On the other hand, I’ve been hooked on Aleks. I find that funny because the same complaints I had about Rosetta Stone, another parent had about Aleks. However, for my kid, it seems to really work. The older boy did pre-algebra and algebra 1 through his old school using the program. With just that background, he received a 500-something on his SAT quantitative score last fall. When we came back to Fargo and began homeschooling again, we opted to use the same program. The older boy doesn’t always like the explanations, but he is able to do the vast majority of his math with no oversight from me. The program regularly assesses his knowledge and reviews concepts he seems to have forgotten.
And did I mention we threw him into college-level algebra and trigonometry?
The program has a large review section, so he was able to catch up on any review he needed by skipping geometry and algebra II. He has the option of taking ACE credits for the course, as well, so some colleges will say he’s met his math requirements (unless he needs to take calc – but frankly, I’m not going to deal with that one).
I admit that he needs help from a real human being sometimes, but I appreciate that he can progress at his own pace. And I can definitely tell he’s learning a lot. Even when he asks for help, it’s pretty obvious he understands what concepts are necessary for understanding the topic and is able to explain things. And given how much he really dislikes math, I think it’s amazing the progress he’s made.
The younger boy started math through Stanford’s EPGY program this year. There are two options – one where you are assigned a tutor and they provide updates to your school while the other is simply progressing through the program and assumes that the parents are overseeing the learning. The second option, open enrollment, is probably ideal if you’re homeschooling. It’s also a lot cheaper, too.
He loves the program. Given he was claiming to dislike math, I was expecting a struggle. We decided to give it a try, however, based on positive feedback from others. It’s not been a struggle: he is very willing to sit down and do a 20 minute session nightly. He treats it like a game, and it gives positive reinforcement when he gets things correct as well as giving him the opportunity to correct his mistakes when he gets things wrong. Although he’s not very far into it, I’m impressed that they’ve managed to introduce variables and complex topics like balancing equations into lower elementary math. They start out at a very basic level and step things up gradually, so the only help he’s needed from me is when we have java glitches. His favorite part is that he can progress as fast as he likes, and he likes to be able to skip problems.
In both math programs, learning is adaptive. Assessments are done more regularly in Aleks than EPGY’s program. But my overall feeling is that math is probably one of the best candidates for ‘online learning’.
In the fall, the older boy will try taking some writing classes through Johns Hopkins. As far as I’m aware, there’s not much of this that will be automated. The classes will involve either interacting with the teacher and classmates on a web-based message board, meaning students will progress as a group, or emailing with the teacher, which can result in more personalized instruction. For writing, I’m guessing this is the best format for language as it provides the feedback he needs. I’m really not sure you can use online learning in an automated format for something like this, so there’s no way you can dispense with the teacher. One huge advantage to this method, however, is the medium: the older boy struggles a lot with handwriting, but can type easily. This is far less frustrating than having to compose things by hand, as he would do in a normal classroom.
Based on these experiences, I think online learning can really benefit some kids. Even in the best case, it’s good to have an adult to help out when necessary or to set and enforce some guidelines as far as how much time is spent on the programs. If it’s done right, online learning should include regular feedback and assessment and, because it works at the kids’ pace, should be minimally frustrating.
The biggest advantages, from my perspective, are that students aren’t stuck working at the pace of those around them, slower or faster, and they can take time to master the concepts they don’t understand while skipping over those that they do. It will work better for some topics than others, but there are ways to do many different topics well in an online environment. When using this type of teaching in school, it will be important to have teachers that can deal well with an unstructured environment. If all the kids are working at their own pace, the teacher needs to be a facilitator and can’t count on prepping the night before so that they understand the material. I can see that dealing with kids working at different levels might be more difficult for classroom teachers as they may need to learn to work on several topics at once.
WSJ’s “Burden of Raising a Gifted Kid” April 4, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, Fargo, gifted, homeschooling, older son, younger son.Tags: education, expensive, gifted, homeschooling, public schools
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I came across the article The Burden of Raising a Gifted Kid last week, and two thoughts crossed my mind. One was, “Absolutely!” The second, a bit more complicated, was how I, like some of the commenters, get frustrated that so many of these stories always focus on prodigies.
But first things first.
Right now, I’m personally frustrated with the whole time/financial burden that seems to come with my kids’ being ahead of the curve. To show why this is frustrating, I’ll look at each kid individually. First, the older one is in a school where they simply don’t believe in acceleration. He’s not allowed to take AP classes until he’s a junior, period. While he’s taking some classes at the local public school, these are more related to the arts. There’s no way he’ll stay interested in the classes he would take at the school, and if he’s not interested, he won’t learn. (And he certainly won’t remember to turn in homework!) Our solution is a combination of classes through homeschooling and other resources. The materials that seem to work the best for him usually run on the order of $100-$200/class. Granted, this is cheaper than a college class, but it’s not exactly cheap. Some of his classes are done on the computer, which run about twice this. And he’s planning to take some classes at Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth – running between $800 and $1300 each. And he probably will start college either junior or senior year of high school…so that’ll be even worse.
The younger one isn’t much better. He’s in private school ($$$!) and he’s taking classes through Stanford’s EPGY program - running around $500 every 3 mos. per class.
None of this includes the ‘normal’ kid expenses – various clubs and activities and lessons that they are also involved in, like scouts or swimming lessons.
I realize that this is a whining rant, but it frustrates me that there is a simple, inexpensive option that the public schools won’t provide: acceleration. I guess it’s even more frustrating to realize that if I were willing to move back to the Minneapolis area, we would have several options not only for acceleration but for specialized programs for the kids…at no cost to us. The two years that I lived down there were admittedly stressful, but I think that’s the only time that I’ve not had to worry about my kids’ education because I knew it was being taken care of. It involved a ‘normal’ commitment of time and finances. (Which is good when you’re on a grad student salary!)
I guess, in reality, this is a trade-off based on where I live. I like living here, but the schools are only great if you have normal kids.
This brings up the problem I had with the article: gifted kids are really prodigies.
But inside the private lives of families of truly gifted kids – the less-than-1% whose extraordinary talents are so obvious that parents themselves are surprised — the juggle can get pretty crazy, as I report in today’s “Work & Family” column.
I realize that was not the intent, but it’s frustrating as the parent of gifted kids who are not prodigies to deal with this stereotyped notion of giftedness. Realistically, a lot of people have come to believe that ‘gifted’ either means a child is some sort of super-driven, highly successful and accomplished adolescents…or you’re just some parent who is really pushing an average-to-bright kid to do more than they are able. (Of course, even if you point out that they are already achieving at a very high level, this just means you’re uppity.)
While I have no desire to try to keep up with a profoundly gifted kid (the ones who are prodigies usually fall into that range), keeping up with my two is already a struggle because of the lack of educational support. Really, I’m having to do it myself or shell out lots of money to someone else, prodigy or not. If my kids were prodigies, I feel like at least it’d be easier for someone to recognize that you can’t just put them in a normal classroom and expect them to suffer through the boredom. Even being in the top 1% doesn’t mean that their gifts and needs are obvious, especially to classroom teachers.
Overall, however, I think the article was good at making the point that it is not the parents pushing this: the parents are doing what they can to provide for the kids needs. But some of us are incredibly frustrated in the meantime.
How I hate thee, biologee March 26, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, homeschooling, math, older son, science.Tags: biology, curriculum, homeschooling, math, older son
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We’re coming to the close of older boy’s first year of high school, and this has caused me to look over what we’d been planning to do for his schooling in light of my completely unrealistic view of what he could accomplish in a year.
I discovered that this notion that he could do about 3-4 college level classes at a time may be realistic – if one is not also taking 2-3 classes in high school. Oops.
Conclusion: 2 college classes max.
I also discovered that computer classes, while being really great, are too difficult to tackle because of all the shiny, pretty things on the internet. Fortunately, we have no more classes like that as he will be completing his last math class this year. I promised him that if he finished college algebra and trigonometry (aka precalc), that he would not be required to take any further math (much to my chagrin). This means he gets to spend the next two years doing things he really loves: language and writing, history, and social science. First advantage: I hopefully won’t have to keep harping on him to get his math done.
For the next two years, the boy will be doing video courses and classes through Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. The second advantage to this is that I don’t have to oversee any of the JHU classes.
You may notice that science is absent from that list. That’s because it’s a real quandry for me. You see, the older boy is squeamish beyond belief. He’s taking a health class this semester, and it’s been horrible for him. One of the things I felt he should take was biology, but I know there is absolutely no way he can handle the labs. We’ve therefore come up with another compromise: he’s going to try to do early entry at the college for his senior year. I came up with an idea: the kid hates biology…but he loves geology. Our compromise is that he’s going to take physical geology as well as history of Earth through time. The latter class actually deals a lot with biology and the evolution of life on earth. I figure this is the closest he’s going to get to a biology class without passing out or leaving the room wretching.
You can tell he’s definitely my kid.
Teaching math without memorization March 2, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, homeschooling, math, older son, teaching.Tags: abacus, arithmetic, bead frame, gifted education, homeschooling, math, multiplication, tables
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If there is one thing I learned in my junior level electromagnetics class that will always stick with me, it’s this:
The permittivity of free space (ε0) is 8.854 * 10 -12 F/m.
And realizing that will always stick with me gave me a lot of insight into what is wrong with the typical approach to teaching math, especially in elementary school.
I know it’s a stretch, but bear with me.
(Totally gratuitous picture of a cute baby bear.)
One of the things I’ve encountered with both my kids is that their teachers are very set on them memorizing math facts. My older boy spent 3rd and 6th grade enrolled full-time in regular public school programs, and his third grade teacher was constantly railing on about how he was ‘bad in math’. In fact, she blamed it on the fact that he’d been homeschooling. (We got this every time we talked to her.) She would go on and on about how he didn’t have his tables memorized. Why, he had to stop and think every time she asked him a basic addition problem!
OMG…thinking in school?! Can’t have that.
I therefore found it very amusing when, prior to the the next school year, his principle pulled out the results of his spring MAPS testing and commented on how good his math scores were because, in her words, “He must know his tables really well.”
By these two comments alone, you can tell what is important to elementary school teachers: memorization of arithmetic tables.
Aside from having a BS in physics, I minored in math in college. Despite the fact that I had enough credits for a major, the credits were in overwhelmingly applied math classes, and there was no applied math major at my school. Suffice it to say that I do have at least a basic knowledge of math.
I also have homeschooled my older child for most of his educational career, and as a freshman in high school, he’s finishing a course in college algebra and trigonometry.
During the older child’s homeschooling years, I never once made an attempt to have him memorize tables of any kind. I did not practice a lot of repetition of basic facts, either. This was because of my experience in my electromagnetics class: I didn’t memorize the value of the permittivity of free space due to repetition and drill; I memorized it because I used it in nearly every problem I did for four months in that class. Yeah, I had to look it up the first dozen times I used it, but after that, it was lodged in my brain. And look…it’s still there a decade later!
I came to the conclusion that if you really need to know something, you’ll learn it through frequent use. But how do you use something that you don’t know?
Addition and subtraction are fairly simple: you give a kid a bead frame, abacus, or even a ruler (the original slide rule!) and show them how to perform addition and subtraction operations using beads or moving up and down a number line. Then you can move them quite quickly through addition and subtraction of infinitely (okay…not infinite) finitely large numbers. You can let them go through increasingly complex topics without ever making them memorize a table. In fact, after a short time, you’ll find that they are pointing at beads or rulers in the air, counting out the solution to their problem. And after that, the invisible ruler or beads will be sitting in their head, being manipulated by mental fingers. Finally, they won’t even have to think about it…they’ll just know.
The image on the left is an abacus, while the image on the right is a bead frame. Bead frames are easier to find and manipulate, in my experience.
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Multiplication should be taught as addition of groups of objects, and division as ‘counting’ of the number of groups in the whole. Once kids have mastered the process of multiplication and division, you can then simply print out a multiplication table. I had my older son paste it on the inside cover of a notebook or the front of a folder so that he could always find it. You may find that some kids prefer to go back to the bead frames. (And if you are really lucky, you have an abacus and know how to use it for multiplication…which I don’t.) Any method is fine as long as it works for your child. But the point is that you can then let them progress through more and more complicated arithmetic involving those operations (such as multiplying large numbers or long division) using the table or other device to look up values. Again, as you progress through these concepts, they will slowly begin to memorize them.
As a homeschooler, the curriculum that I chose for math was fairly important as well. I liked Singapore math for it’s focus on simplicity and conceptual explanations. Everyone raves about the ‘mental math’ tricks that are taught in the series. And they’re right: mental math is awesome. However, the only reason the series does it so effectively is because it teaches the concepts in a way that you can then make logical simplifications in process that result in ‘mental math’ and good estimation skills.
(My only complaint is that they don’t teach the lattice method of multiplication. I think the ‘traditional’ method of multiplying large numbers is much better suited for estimation methods, whereas the lattice method is definitely superior for calculating with precision.)
To me, the important part of all of this is to make sure that they understand what the process of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Kids can memorize facts for quick recall, but if that is the emphasis and they can’t recall a fact, they’re going to be stuck. If the emphasis is instead on teaching arithmetic as a process, they can always figure it out should they forget.
And really, arithmetic is a process. I came across an article on Hoagies’ Gifted site called Why Memorize? I have to take big exception to the article because it says that math is a lot of dry facts. If you teach it as memorization of facts instead of a process of manipulating numbers (or objects or motion in space), it sure is! But I can tell you that it’s not, and as you advance to higher level classes in mathematics, reliance on the notion that math is memorization will cause you problems and impede your progression.
Finally, I have to wonder if this is why so many elementary school educators fear math: it’s boring memorization of facts. They are never taught how it’s actually a really cool process. If it were taught properly, preferably with a lot of enthusiasm instead of dread, I wonder if a lot of teachers would lose their ‘math-phobia’. And that would, of course, mean their students might start to like math, too.
Style versus substance December 14, 2010
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, family, homeschooling, older son, teaching, younger son.Tags: homeschooling, learning styles, school, visual-spatial
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I think I spent the vast majority of the older boy’s elementary school years arguing with teachers who didn’t understand that a kid could be both LD and gifted. The arguments that they presented seemed extremely superficial from my perspective.
For instance, they told me he was not good at math, and they used the following as evidence:
“He doesn’t have his tables memorized.”
“He keeps flipping his numbers around. His numbers are malformed.”
“He has to think for a long time about his computations.”
The teachers used these arguments as justification that he should not be allowed to progress in math.
I come from a different perspective: thinking about how to do math is far more important than memorizing tables. If he understood what he was doing, no matter how slow, there was no reason to hold him back. Far better to learn the process to figure these things than mindlessly memorize a bunch of numbers. Tables can be printed out on paper and referenced.
When I finally gave up and homeschooled, that is exactly what I did: I printed out addition and multiplication tables. I explained how to use them. Then I started moving him very rapidly from single digit to multiple digit manipulations. I never made him memorize anything. However, he knows his times tables as well as any other kid his age. In fact, chances are he knows them better since he’s taking college algebra and trig as a freshman in high school.
The reality is that comprehension is more important than computation when it comes to math. Yes, getting the computation right is important, but that’s also why we have tools (ranging from calculators to mathematica) to check ourselves. Knowing how to do the problem is essential for fixing our errors: that is something a calculator can’t explain.
Unfortunately, now that the younger boy is in school, these arguments are coming on all over again. Interestingly enough, they don’t seem to be around math, which is the older boy’s phobia. No, the younger one is acknowledged to be quite adept mathematically. But they were claiming he is behind in reading.
The younger boy has quite a perfectionist streak, and so if he can’t do something perfectly, he doesn’t like to do it at all. And worse yet, he compares his abilities to his brother’s all the time. (He doesn’t realize that his brother has had a decade to master a lot of these things.) Reading has always been a bit terrifying for him.
When I mentioned to the teacher that the books they were sending home were far too easy (things he’d read in kindergarten), she told me that they were looking for comprehension. That was actually part of my problem: the books they were sending home had no plot, so if you ask him what happened, he couldn’t tell you. However, I started him reading Magic Tree House books, and he had no problem telling me what happened there.
Fortunately, the books coming home seem a bit better, but I got a note from the assistant teacher saying that one of the things they were working on was reading “smoothly”.
I have three issues with this. First, reading aloud is not as simple as just plain reading. While I can imagine that a child who reads well out loud is a good reader, I don’t think a child who may have difficulty articulating what they’re reading implies they aren’t a good reader. Even if the reading is choppy, if they aren’t struggling to read the words, then that’s a good indicator they understand the words. Saying ‘choppy reading indicates he’s having problems’ is like saying a kid who writes their numbers ‘funny’ is not good at math. Second, I feel that if you send a more difficult book home with a kid, they’re going to be exposed to many more words, which will give them more practice. This, obviously, will create a better reader than giving them books which are not challenging: increase the learning curve, and the rate of learning will necessarily be higher. If you don’t challenge them, they’ll continue to plod along at the same slow pace.
The final issue is that this will be very child-dependent. In this case, I have already had my son’s IQ tested, and one thing that came out of this testing is that he, like myself and his brother, is strongest in visual abilities. He may have a lot of difficulty reading “smoothly” for a while because, being a visual learner, he will need to translate every word he reads into a mental picture. This means he will read the word and have to pause after it to process what it looks like. Then he will read the next word and do the same thing.
The problem I have with all of this is that the focus is not on comprehension and higher-level cognitive skills. Kids are held back because of lower-level skills, the kind that require practice. Rather than giving kids stimulating work to practice on, work that challenges the higher-level skills, it’s easier to focus on the areas where there may be functional weakness, holding the child’s mind hostage to their motor functions.
As I was pondering this, an article on visual-spatial learning from the Eide Neurolearning Blog popped up in my reader. (Honestly, it was incredible timing!) After discussing ways to deal with visual learners, they ended with:
Be Patient Young visual thinkers are classic late bloomers. Yes, there are ways to help, but it’s also a good idea to understand big picture view of their growth and development.
It was good to remember that this too shall pass, despite the fact that I’m frustrated to be dealing with these same issues again.
My Cheetah July 25, 2010
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, homeschooling, older son.Tags: education, gifted, homeschooling, older son
2 comments
I read this wonderful post discussing the measurable decline in creativity in the US.
When you read things like this, it hits a lot closer to home when you have kids in school. It’s even worse when those kids are gifted.
The older boy was a third the age is he is now when I first heard that he might be gifted. The only reason this was put on my radar is because I brought him to some researchers studying one of the myriad diagnoses that his teachers threw at him. I wanted some experts to evaluate him.
One of the things they threw out as a possible source of classroom conflict was that he was gifted. When I discussed this with his teachers, they said they didn’t think that was the problem because they had lots of students who were gifted.
The trouble with getting teachers to identify gifted students is that they are not on the lookout for kids with great insight. They are on the lookout for kids who are organized and compliant. Some gifted kids are, more are not.
When I finally had him tested by a psychologist who deals with the gifted, I was in for a shock. Saying he might be gifted was a considerable understatement.
The first thing I found on the internet about giftedness was Stephanie Tolan’s Is it a cheetah?. After that I delved into a ton of educational literature, most of which told me that 95% of the time, gifted children are left in an emotional and intellectual black hole in a normal school system. They aren’t challenged, they are picked on for being different, and they are highly likely to suffer depression or other issues because of how many cannot deal with being around someone who is different.
After fighting with the schools and teachers who claimed he couldn’t be gifted, the boy spent that last two years in a program for kids in the highly gifted and above range. The change has been amazing. Many people have commented on how much he has matured. And he has.
I think the change is because he was allowed to grow, to pursue some of his own interests without having them be discounted as ‘extraneous nonsense’ because they didn’t mesh with what teachers wanted him to do, to hang out with kids who treated his quirks as what they were rather than a reason to tease and attack.
But now he’s going to be leaving this school, and the road ahead is not clear for him. We are tenatively planning to homeschool part-time and be in regular school for a couple classes a day.
I have made it clear that his emotional well-being is more important than him being “properly socialized” in school. (What does that mean? He gets to feel like crap because other people are picking on him?) I have seen what a difference it makes to be around other kids who are like him and with teachers who respect him as a person. He’s become very comfortable with himself and gained a lot of confidence.
If I see that slipping away or if I see that he doesn’t have enough time to focus on his talents and interests, he’ll be done with public school.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
The presumed snobbery of gifted education February 2, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, gifted, homeschooling, older son, societal commentary.Tags: acceleration, gifted, gifted education, homeschooling, snobs
11 comments
I was having a conversation with my older boy the other day (it does still happen…despite the fact that he’s a teenager, I haven’t become dumb as bricks yet), and we were talking about people we know who are what I’d call “gifted education snobs”.
I’m sure you’ve met these people: they’re the ones who talk about how their kids will eventually get into Harvard while they can’t even tie their own shoes at 16. Although, if their kid is like Albert Einstein, it might be forgivable. But seriously, these are the people who are pushing kids who are probably reasonably bright beyond their limits or into doing things that make them depressed and frustrated.
The reason they bug me is not because they have kids who may or may not be intellectually superior to my own. Let’s face it: I’ve run into a lot of people who are smarter and more knowledgeable than myself. It’s not even the attitude that they are superior (although I have to admit that can get annoying, too).
What gets me is the notion that their kids are so bright that everything will come easy to them and they’ll never have to work at anything. Because that’s what it means to be smart, right? This attitude is obviously not working for the kid, and it’s giving everyone else a bad impression of what giftedness is or is not, as well as what the parents of ‘gifted kids’ are like.
This attitude is what hurts the rest of us who are advocating for our gifted kids. I imagine from the outside, it all looks the same to someone who doesn’t anticipate their kid will ever get to be in a gifted program. We all just look like we’re trying to give our kids a special advantage over everyone else.
So let me clarify: that’s not at all what I have been trying to do with my kids. There are some things gifted education should do that has nothing to do with a special advantages:
1) I want my kid to learn to work hard. No matter how smart you are, there will always be things that are challenging in life. There will be some point where you hit a brick wall. It’s best if you learn early on how to manage your time, be responsible, and deal with learning new things (which can sometimes be intimidating). Probably two-thirds of most students can get that out of a regular classroom. For half of the other third (or one sixth), it will be too much – and there is a significant amount of funding and infrastructure in place to help these kids (which they very much deserve). However, the other sixth is left to float, in most cases. They’re smart, and for some reason it’s more acceptable to let these kids coast and fight boredom through school than to give them the same appropriately challenging education that most other kids receive.
My older son is learning that there’s a significant difference in effort between his high school and homeschool courses. At most, he spends about two hours outside of school per week doing his high school work. His homeschool work, where he’s learning everything himself, is a lot harder. He’s even gotten extremely frustrated. But that’s what I wanted: he needs to learn to deal with that frustration (that he can learn things that are hard if he keeps trying or gets some help). I want him to know how to deal with this before he gets to college and flames out because he’s never had to those other skills established and honed.
2) Gifted kids, like all other kids, want to feel secure and have friends. They don’t want to be the constant target of bullies. Again, I think this is because most people may not understand how badly gifted kids can stick out. I got tons of complaints about my older son “talking like a professor” in middle school. I never thought he talked oddly because this is the way we talk to each other at home. But in a group of mixed-ability, this sort of behavior sticks out, and the other kids use it as an excuse to bully and ostracize. There has been a lot of research (some of which is listed here) showing that gifted kids are more likely to be bullied than others, even by teachers, because of their differences. The only place many of these kids feel secure and can make friends are when they are with other kids like themselves, i.e. where they won’t stick out like sore thumbs. This sort of arrangement also tends to make them less likely to become overly confident in their abilities because they go from being smarter than everyone else in a regular classroom to the average person. (The fact that they are in a gifted classroom often doesn’t play into their perceptions; they are more affected by their interactions with the people around them than labels.)
So when I complain about my kid not being able to take advanced coursework, it’s not because I think he’s better than everyone else: it’s because I know he’s being deprived of the opportunity to learn the intangible skills that go with being appropriately challenged. It also deprives him of the chance to feel like a normal kid. Both of those things are very important to how he will function as an adult, and far more important to me than having him look like he’s smarter than other kids.