Reply to Should I send my kids to mathnasium?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Ten minutes of direct instruction and then time doing a worksheet [i]is [/i]math class.  Whether the worksheet came out of a textbook or not isn't an issue.  For all those people lamenting the quality of grade school math, they seem to be forgetting that it is grade school math.  [/quote]

So what should kids be doing the other 45 minutes of math class?

[b]Also, whether the worksheet came out of a textbook or not is an issue.  If there's a textbook, then lessons are taught in a coherent manner with logical sequencing and worked examples.  The problem sets provided with textbooks flow naturally from the lesson and reinforce it.  Worksheets downloaded from the internet often don't fully follow the lesson, don't do a great job of fully exploring the topic of study, don't provide a natural progression of easier to more challenging problems, and haven't gone through any quality control whatsoever.  I'm surprised that anyone would think that a teacher could just cobble together free resources from the internet and end up with anything remotely akin to a textbook.  [/b]

Grade school math has changed significantly in the last 30 years.  Back in the day, we covered material more slowly, but also much more in depth.  Classes had longer segments of whole class direct instruction, worktime, time to ask the teacher questions, having to present problems on the chalkboard, and so on.  The entire class time was filled with learning.

In my kids' AAP center, they rotate through the game station, the computer station, the sudoku station, and things like that to waste time between sessions with the teacher.  For the most part, they can't ask questions or clarifications, since the teacher is always busy with another group.  Due to the station work, the class is a chaotic madhouse most of the time, and it's too noisy for kids to hear the teacher or concentrate.  If the kids have questions, there's no textbook to turn to for answers.   There's no consistency between the classes, since teachers in the same grade will cobble together their own internet resources.  Most of these resources are poor quality and not a great fit for the lessons they are supposed to be learning.  Math class is at best 25% class and 75% wasting time.  [/quote]

Totally agree. Random worksheets from different sources are like sub teachers, there are no consistency whatsoever. Do you want to be in a class taught by different teachers all the time?? Different worksheets were designed by different authors with different goals, teaching philosophy, problem-solving strategies, and formats. This lack of coherency is awful for any learner, but especially the beginners. [/quote]

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