Reply to really interesting article on math and acceleration

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "really interesting article on math and acceleration"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]Parent of a child who did 2 separate 1 year skips (once @3rd and once @5th).  And, another child who has done one skip @1st grade.

Kids who accelerate in math are entirely capable of doing the math if it is taught, but my view has come to be that the teaching is extremely weak.  Our family has experienced teachers who regularly give incorrect answers in class and on homework, and teachers who teach methods of problem-solving which have more to do with mimicry of a process rather than understanding the underlying math (see article's point 2 above).

It isn't that accelerated kids are capable of understanding, it's largely that they have not been taught the math principles and have not been given enough problems to see the variations and their own tendancies for mistakes.  I must continually re-teach certain problem types (fractions, scientific notation, algebraic manipulation, decimals, unit conversion) at home.  Other kids in the accelerated class who don't get this re-teaching doubtless have problems in acceleration.

I also agree with PP that calculators are a BIG problem (their use starts in 3rd or 4th grade).  There is really no point in having a 3rd grader use a calculator -- it's counterproductive.  I forbid calculator use on elementary school homework in our class.  If our children want to use the calculator, they have to do the problem first and then check it with a calculator.

As for #3 in the article -- the concepts themselves are hardly developmentally inappropriate.  Just as there are some kids who are reading at age 3 (yes, it does happen), others are not fluent readers until 7 or 8.  Same goes for math.  The problem is that the acceleration or compacted class is usually just pushed straight down without any thought.  For example, my 2nd grader in a compacted 3rd/4th grade math class was asked to do mean/average calculations in the 4th grade segment one quarter before division was taught in the 3rd grade segment.  Frustrating to say the least.  Some thoughtful re-ordering of concepts thru the year would have been more sensible.  But, that's not allowed by MCPS (or the teacher isn't clued in enough to do it).

There are other problems w/ what is developmentally appropriate in terms of pencil-skills.  A first grader normally doesn't have the physical pencil skills to write arrays illustrating division or multiplication problems with numbers over 20 or 30.  But, give that same child a Montessori-style bead array board, and the multiplication and division problems become much more do-able.

And, finally, another problem with "compacted" classes is that the teacher will often just simply not teach the additional material if he/she is running out of time.  This means in a combined 3/4 class, the 4th grade material might not get taught in one unit, but the teacher will still move on to the 4th grade material in the next unit as if he/she had taught the last.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics