Reply to "We need to go back to direct instruction"

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to ""We need to go back to direct instruction""

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Elementary teacher here. I have had both strong and weak kids in math class. The current trend to have kids spend so much time exploring alternate ways of solving problems is crazy. They need to memorize their times tables once they understand how multiplication works, not constantly draw six groups of eight objects. Kids with LD need much direct instruction while the advanced kids need projects. It’s hard to do all at once, and now teachers all have to teach the same way at the same time, without textbooks or workbooks.

In the old days, I’d have a group lesson, then the advanced kids would do the problems or activities in the book, including the challenge stuff, and the other kids would work in small groups or independently on the basic problems. It was quiet and kids could concentrate. This math workshop model has kids constantly moving and talking and getting on and off computers, all of which is so distracting.

Please contact your school board and ask for textbooks.

My own child in high school had another parent who was a high school math teacher, and trying to help her without a textbook was so hard, because my child was not strong in math and could not explain what strategy she was supposed to use. [/quote]

I agree with you.  And modern textbooks when they exist are often all chopped up to to tie to the Internet or to allow teachers to hop around.

When my child was struggling in 7th grade Spanish, even sitting with the textbook didn't allow me to review his curriculum.  He had covered random half page units scattered throughout the first 100 pages of the text.  I had him do ixl.com Spanish for 6 hours and a bit of Duolingo.

In 6 hours of self-study, he was able to go from a C-minus/failing student to a B+ student.  That was remediation for 4.5 months of class learning.  I was appalled that it took so little time and also that I couldn't use his textbook to accomplish it.[/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