“I’ve never been good at reading.”
“I can’t help my kids at all with their reading homework. Reading was always my worst subject.”
“Anything after middle school English, forget it – I’m terrible.”
Have you ever heard a parent utter these statements? Of course not, because to make a statement such as, “I’m not that good at reading,” is socially unacceptable among the averagely educated, involved parents of school aged children in our society. Which begs the question of, why then, is it socially acceptable to make such statements about math? Parents will, almost proudly, say things to me like “I was terrible at math so I’m not surprised that little David is having so much trouble with math.” Further, not only is it acceptable to make such a statement, it is practically a badge of honor for some parents when making such a claim.
Would this same parent, proudly, say the same thing to little David’s English or reading teacher, or so proudly wear their ignorance of Reading like a badge of honor? Of course not because it is not socially acceptable to “not be good at” reading. Why is this the case? I’m not exactly sure but what I do know is that parents with school-aged children, who were not raised and socialized in our American culture, do not make such claims. Parents who were socialized in Asian, Indian, Caribbean or African cultures just to name a few do not make such claims about themselves or their children’s lack of mathematics ability or aptitude. This type of thinking in my experience is a uniquely American phenomenon. And the implication being in all of this is the assumption that a person is either inherently good at math, or not. Either a person has the illusive “math gene” or not.
So by extension does this mean there is a reading gene as well? Why wouldn’t there be? If there is a math gene, then there must be a reading gene as well. Perhaps there is, but if this reading gene does, in fact, exist parents do not invoke or acknowledge its existence as readily and as proudly as the reason why little David may not be a good reader. Not being a good reader is unacceptable in our current educational system and in our society. Reading is now infused “across the curriculum” as any American teacher knows. Schools have implemented strategies such as nightly homework reading requirements and the popular 100 book reading challenge as ways to help students improve reading. When it comes to reading actual practice is the norm as to addressing reading issues not the invocation of genetics.
As a high school math teacher, I have become very weary of hearing the myriad of excuses that parents and students alike make to explain poor math performance. As with reading, there are two main things that we as a society and we as a collective American educational system need to adopt in order to address the math deficiencies of our students. First, we need to change our mindset about one’s ability to learn mathematics. Just as we believe with reading, with math one becomes proficient through practice, time on task, the expectation of success and the belief that learning math is within everyone’s grasp.
The math gene theory needs to be retired as our national scapegoat regarding our children’s performance in math. We need to stop giving our kids permission to give up on a topic that can be learned and mastered with practice, perseverance and the proper “can do” mindset. Let’s support our kids with a positive attitude towards math and encourage them to succeed in mathematics instead of making up excuses and being tacitly complicit in their failure.
About the Author
Wynne Stovall-Johnson is currently a secondary mathematics teacher at Lower Merion High School in Pa. At Lower Merion she has taught all levels of mathematics from consumer math through standard level Calculus since 1993. Before teaching high school, Wynne taught middle school for 3 years in NJ. Wynne holds a Masters of Arts degree in Mathematics Education from Teachers College - Columbia University, a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from Spelman College and her Principal Certification from Cabrini College. She currenty lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with her husband and two children.
Selasa, 21 Julai 2009
Exam Hints
EXPERIENCE has shown that not all students are good at exams. Some don't take advantage of the opportunity to gain credit for what they know or can do. Some simple techniques that can improve your exam result.
Exam philosophy: The aim in marking exams is to find out what you know, what you can express, what you understand and what you can do. You can only get credit if show evidence of your abilities. A skeleton answer might get some credit for a correct conclusion, or the right jargon, but it does not constitute evidence that you actually know what you are doing!
In particular:
o If a question asks you to "explain", "describe", etc something, then write in proper English sentences - don't just jot down buzz-words. Usually notes do not provide convincing evidence, because they are indistinguishable from vaguely remembered phrases.
o If you are asked to work something out, or "to show that ...", then include your working out (neatly) as part of your answer - then you may be able to get some credit for your method, even if you make a mistake or get the wrong answer.
* Read the exam paper carefully: The "rubric" at the start provides important information: e.g. make sure that you know how long the exam is, how many questions you have to do, and check whether there are special directions given.
You may wish to read the whole paper thoroughly before selecting the questions that you wish to answer, but, even if you don't, do read carefully each of the questions that you do answer.
In particular, read the whole of a question before attempting to answer it: Often exam questions to be informative and direct, but sometimes it is not possible and the tail end of question (or part thereof) may contain a qualification, hint or additional instruction that must be taken into account.
Candidates sometimes forget to answer parts of questions, for no apparent reason, and lose credit that otherwise would have easily been gained. Make sure that you have dealt with everything that has been asked.
* Read the instructions on the cover of the exam answer booklets: In particular the statement about writing clearly.
* Keep to a rigid timetable: Usually each question on the exam paper is worth the same amount (check this). Divide the time available equally among the questions that you have to do (you might even consider dividing the time up between the individual parts of a question). It is usually not worth struggling on with a question that is proving too difficult: if you have reached the end of the question's time slot then you should definitely go on to a fresh question (the early parts of the next question are almost certainly more easily won credit than the struggle you are currently having); if the time slot is not up, then either attempt other parts of the current question if there are any, or go on to a fresh question and come back to the current one if you have time left at the end (and you should have if you stick to the timetable
* Count the questions that you do carefully: On the one hand make sure that you do enough - if you are required to do four, and you only attempt three, then your maximum possible total mark is reduced by 25%! On the other hand make sure that you don't do too many (unless the rubric makes it clear that you simply have to as much as you can). If we ask you to do four questions and you do five, then we will simply not count one of your answers: so you might as well have spent the time checking and polishing just four answers (it may sound ridiculous, but students actually do make this mistake every year).
* About crossing out: Examiners have no time to read any more than they have to. Therefore anything which is crossed out they tend to simply ignore (whatever stupidities it may contain). So feel free to put jottings in your exam book and then cross them out. Equally, if you have done something wrong then simply cross it out and carry on. This applies to a reasonable amount of correction within written text - but if there are too many crossings out and rearrangements then it is probably better to put a line through the whole paragraph and re-write it. Here are some criteria to apply: neat and fast. One or two diagonal lines through a paragraph are enough to remove it from our view - no need to frantically scrub the paper with your pen (that takes a long time too!). You should be very wary of using Snowpake or Tipp-Ex to make corrections: they take so long to use for little or no benefit over a simply horizontal or diagonal stroke of the pen. Admittedly, there are occasions on which Tipp-Ex is probably useful (for example, to correct mistakes in diagrams), so I will just caution care.
Long questions vs. short questions: Questions which occupy a lot of space on the exam paper look intimidating, but this may be an illusion. Often, long questions consist of many small, well defined parts which can be answered independently: so you can probably gain straightforward marks from any part that you answer. In contrast, questions which appear to be short often consist of just a few parts, each of which requires sustained creative and compositional effort - and, although the marks are certainly available, it can be far from obvious how to guarantee that you win them!
About the Author
educational consultant.
www.american-schools.net
Exam philosophy: The aim in marking exams is to find out what you know, what you can express, what you understand and what you can do. You can only get credit if show evidence of your abilities. A skeleton answer might get some credit for a correct conclusion, or the right jargon, but it does not constitute evidence that you actually know what you are doing!
In particular:
o If a question asks you to "explain", "describe", etc something, then write in proper English sentences - don't just jot down buzz-words. Usually notes do not provide convincing evidence, because they are indistinguishable from vaguely remembered phrases.
o If you are asked to work something out, or "to show that ...", then include your working out (neatly) as part of your answer - then you may be able to get some credit for your method, even if you make a mistake or get the wrong answer.
* Read the exam paper carefully: The "rubric" at the start provides important information: e.g. make sure that you know how long the exam is, how many questions you have to do, and check whether there are special directions given.
You may wish to read the whole paper thoroughly before selecting the questions that you wish to answer, but, even if you don't, do read carefully each of the questions that you do answer.
In particular, read the whole of a question before attempting to answer it: Often exam questions to be informative and direct, but sometimes it is not possible and the tail end of question (or part thereof) may contain a qualification, hint or additional instruction that must be taken into account.
Candidates sometimes forget to answer parts of questions, for no apparent reason, and lose credit that otherwise would have easily been gained. Make sure that you have dealt with everything that has been asked.
* Read the instructions on the cover of the exam answer booklets: In particular the statement about writing clearly.
* Keep to a rigid timetable: Usually each question on the exam paper is worth the same amount (check this). Divide the time available equally among the questions that you have to do (you might even consider dividing the time up between the individual parts of a question). It is usually not worth struggling on with a question that is proving too difficult: if you have reached the end of the question's time slot then you should definitely go on to a fresh question (the early parts of the next question are almost certainly more easily won credit than the struggle you are currently having); if the time slot is not up, then either attempt other parts of the current question if there are any, or go on to a fresh question and come back to the current one if you have time left at the end (and you should have if you stick to the timetable
* Count the questions that you do carefully: On the one hand make sure that you do enough - if you are required to do four, and you only attempt three, then your maximum possible total mark is reduced by 25%! On the other hand make sure that you don't do too many (unless the rubric makes it clear that you simply have to as much as you can). If we ask you to do four questions and you do five, then we will simply not count one of your answers: so you might as well have spent the time checking and polishing just four answers (it may sound ridiculous, but students actually do make this mistake every year).
* About crossing out: Examiners have no time to read any more than they have to. Therefore anything which is crossed out they tend to simply ignore (whatever stupidities it may contain). So feel free to put jottings in your exam book and then cross them out. Equally, if you have done something wrong then simply cross it out and carry on. This applies to a reasonable amount of correction within written text - but if there are too many crossings out and rearrangements then it is probably better to put a line through the whole paragraph and re-write it. Here are some criteria to apply: neat and fast. One or two diagonal lines through a paragraph are enough to remove it from our view - no need to frantically scrub the paper with your pen (that takes a long time too!). You should be very wary of using Snowpake or Tipp-Ex to make corrections: they take so long to use for little or no benefit over a simply horizontal or diagonal stroke of the pen. Admittedly, there are occasions on which Tipp-Ex is probably useful (for example, to correct mistakes in diagrams), so I will just caution care.
Long questions vs. short questions: Questions which occupy a lot of space on the exam paper look intimidating, but this may be an illusion. Often, long questions consist of many small, well defined parts which can be answered independently: so you can probably gain straightforward marks from any part that you answer. In contrast, questions which appear to be short often consist of just a few parts, each of which requires sustained creative and compositional effort - and, although the marks are certainly available, it can be far from obvious how to guarantee that you win them!
About the Author
educational consultant.
www.american-schools.net
Alternative Education and the ADD - ADHD Child
A recent article in USA Today reports that home schooling has been on a steady rise for the last five years. There are now 1.5 million children being home schooled, up 74% since 1999. A desire for religious or moral instruction, formerly the number one reason to choose homeschooling, is now the second most popular reason. The first reason is safety and avoidance of peer pressure and exposure to drugs. Third is the dissatisfaction with academic instruction and fourth is interest in nontraditional approaches.
Current statistics indicate that the number of alternative educational/school choices, not including religious based schools or military schools, is somewhere around twelve thousand. That is the largest number of choices ever to exist outside the traditional public school system and the number keeps growing.
Obviously, the selection of public versus private includes many factors, among them the practical aspects of cost, location, transportation and does the alternative represent a basic ideology that the parent feels would be detrimental to the child. What follows is a look at some of the factors in choosing an educational format.
Determining the educational goal, as a parent, is an easy way to eliminate whole groupings of alternative educational choices. However, a parent might be wise to avoid automatically eliminating, for example, religiously based schools because they are simply not of the family's religion. A school might be quite passive about religious "recruitment" of the child, as are many Catholic private schools, or they may be very active, even aggressive, in the "recruitment" of a child, as are many more fundamentally based religious schools. In one case, a parent chose such a school because of its educational quality but did not fully understand the aggressiveness of the school in converting her child to its belief system. At least not until her child started coming home every day, in tears, begging her mother to convert because she would go to hell if she didn't. Upon further questioning, it was clear that the school had made the child responsible for the task of converting the mother. The child was nine. The mother moved the child the following week.
Next, we want to look at the child. It is imperative to look at the child from multiple perspectives, not just does he/she have ADD/ADHD. Because ADD plays out differently based on learning style, processing style and communication style, the parent should find the school that either actively teaches in a variety of styles or specializes in the styles that best enable his/her child to learn. The parent should also consider aspects such as the child's emotional age and if the child has already found his/her passion(s) in life. If the child is brilliant in computer programming and development and could possibly be the next Bill Gates, the parent would be wise to enroll that child in a school program that specializes in dealing with technically gifted children, as long as all the other bases are covered. Personality and gender also play a role in the whole child. Finally, it is important to gravitate to schools that interweave the development of critical thinking with the development of personal responsibility.
Other things to consider:
• Does the child need structure or is he/she self-structuring?
• How well does the child function independently?
• Does the child have difficulty dealing with change?
• Does the child relate better to a male or a female teacher -- or does it matter?
• What is the child's social skill level with peers and, if this is a challenge, how does the school deal with those kinds of issues?
• What kind of participation is required of the parent, and is this level of participation possible within the framework of the entire family?
If the parents are investigating home schooling, there are some pros and cons to consider.
On the positive side, there are many educational support programs for home schooling currently available and more coming on line all the time. They vary in participation level needed by the parent. Just like shopping for a school, the parent needs to look for an education support program that will best work with the specific child and with the family. Home schooling can allow a child to learn at his/her own pace and can be creatively modified as the child goes on.
On the negative side of home schooling is the stress on the parents. Does the home schooling parent have a flexible teaching style and can that parent switch between the teaching and the parenting roles easily? The teaching parent should currently communicate well with the child and have been successful in helping the child learn new things and to develop new skill sets. As a simple measure, how has the parent done on helping the child with his/her homework to date? There may be resentment between parents caused by the time, energy, and effort required for teaching, on one hand, and by the resulting relationship with the child on the other. More effort will be required of the parents to ensure that the child gets both sufficient social interaction and is exposed to the diversity that the world has to offer, including opinions other than the parent's own. Finally, can the parents help the child to develop the skill sets to manage well in the world when the home schooling ends?
Home schooling is a viable option. If the parents live in a big enough area, they are even likely to find local home schooling groups that do things together. The home schooled child may also attend a class here or there in order to fill out the educational experience. The parents need to make an extra effort in the area of social skills, to be wary of creating an unhealthy attachment or dependency on themselves and to guard against becoming insular in a way that limits the child in dealing with the ever-growing diversity of the world.
The key to finding a successful educational format for the child is for the parents to do their own homework! They need to determine what their educational priorities are and to diligently investigate their options in light of the whole child regardless of ADD/ADHD
About the Author
Dr. Kevin Ross Emery is the author of "Managing The Gift: Alternative Approaches for Attention Deficit Disorder." Dr. Kevin is a Doctor of Divinity. He travels internationally, offering lectures and workshops about ADD, ADHD and related conditions. He also helps set up supportive, non-medical protocols for children and adults with ADD and ADHD. Dr. Kevin's primary practices are in Portland, Maine and Haverhill, Massachusetts. Visit Dr. Kevin at http://www.weboflight.com
Current statistics indicate that the number of alternative educational/school choices, not including religious based schools or military schools, is somewhere around twelve thousand. That is the largest number of choices ever to exist outside the traditional public school system and the number keeps growing.
Obviously, the selection of public versus private includes many factors, among them the practical aspects of cost, location, transportation and does the alternative represent a basic ideology that the parent feels would be detrimental to the child. What follows is a look at some of the factors in choosing an educational format.
Determining the educational goal, as a parent, is an easy way to eliminate whole groupings of alternative educational choices. However, a parent might be wise to avoid automatically eliminating, for example, religiously based schools because they are simply not of the family's religion. A school might be quite passive about religious "recruitment" of the child, as are many Catholic private schools, or they may be very active, even aggressive, in the "recruitment" of a child, as are many more fundamentally based religious schools. In one case, a parent chose such a school because of its educational quality but did not fully understand the aggressiveness of the school in converting her child to its belief system. At least not until her child started coming home every day, in tears, begging her mother to convert because she would go to hell if she didn't. Upon further questioning, it was clear that the school had made the child responsible for the task of converting the mother. The child was nine. The mother moved the child the following week.
Next, we want to look at the child. It is imperative to look at the child from multiple perspectives, not just does he/she have ADD/ADHD. Because ADD plays out differently based on learning style, processing style and communication style, the parent should find the school that either actively teaches in a variety of styles or specializes in the styles that best enable his/her child to learn. The parent should also consider aspects such as the child's emotional age and if the child has already found his/her passion(s) in life. If the child is brilliant in computer programming and development and could possibly be the next Bill Gates, the parent would be wise to enroll that child in a school program that specializes in dealing with technically gifted children, as long as all the other bases are covered. Personality and gender also play a role in the whole child. Finally, it is important to gravitate to schools that interweave the development of critical thinking with the development of personal responsibility.
Other things to consider:
• Does the child need structure or is he/she self-structuring?
• How well does the child function independently?
• Does the child have difficulty dealing with change?
• Does the child relate better to a male or a female teacher -- or does it matter?
• What is the child's social skill level with peers and, if this is a challenge, how does the school deal with those kinds of issues?
• What kind of participation is required of the parent, and is this level of participation possible within the framework of the entire family?
If the parents are investigating home schooling, there are some pros and cons to consider.
On the positive side, there are many educational support programs for home schooling currently available and more coming on line all the time. They vary in participation level needed by the parent. Just like shopping for a school, the parent needs to look for an education support program that will best work with the specific child and with the family. Home schooling can allow a child to learn at his/her own pace and can be creatively modified as the child goes on.
On the negative side of home schooling is the stress on the parents. Does the home schooling parent have a flexible teaching style and can that parent switch between the teaching and the parenting roles easily? The teaching parent should currently communicate well with the child and have been successful in helping the child learn new things and to develop new skill sets. As a simple measure, how has the parent done on helping the child with his/her homework to date? There may be resentment between parents caused by the time, energy, and effort required for teaching, on one hand, and by the resulting relationship with the child on the other. More effort will be required of the parents to ensure that the child gets both sufficient social interaction and is exposed to the diversity that the world has to offer, including opinions other than the parent's own. Finally, can the parents help the child to develop the skill sets to manage well in the world when the home schooling ends?
Home schooling is a viable option. If the parents live in a big enough area, they are even likely to find local home schooling groups that do things together. The home schooled child may also attend a class here or there in order to fill out the educational experience. The parents need to make an extra effort in the area of social skills, to be wary of creating an unhealthy attachment or dependency on themselves and to guard against becoming insular in a way that limits the child in dealing with the ever-growing diversity of the world.
The key to finding a successful educational format for the child is for the parents to do their own homework! They need to determine what their educational priorities are and to diligently investigate their options in light of the whole child regardless of ADD/ADHD
About the Author
Dr. Kevin Ross Emery is the author of "Managing The Gift: Alternative Approaches for Attention Deficit Disorder." Dr. Kevin is a Doctor of Divinity. He travels internationally, offering lectures and workshops about ADD, ADHD and related conditions. He also helps set up supportive, non-medical protocols for children and adults with ADD and ADHD. Dr. Kevin's primary practices are in Portland, Maine and Haverhill, Massachusetts. Visit Dr. Kevin at http://www.weboflight.com
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