Reply to 23 Baltimore City Schools Have Zero Students Proficient in Math

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Isn't area supposed to be taught in 3rd grade? Doesn't the fact that they don't understand it despite it presumably having been covered indicate something wrong about the teaching? Haven't you seen them calculate area in class, on tests, and inhomework?[/quote]

Yup - calculating area of a rectangle IS a third grade standard.

Nope - I teach ESOL, not math, so I mostly teach my students reading and writing. As I said I have four 3rd grade students in this one particular ESOL class so I was curious how they would do on the practice math test items that I was telling you all were (IMO) a bit wordy. I assumed that the students knew how to multiply the sides of a rectangle together to get the area.  They really did not.

Also, they aren't that great at multiplying two numbers together in the first place, but of course that I expected.  When I [b]told[/b] them directly - "you have to multiply 7x4 to get the area- what's 7x4?"

1) One kid knew how to do that, and did it by going up the times table mentally... "7x1=7; 7x2=14, 7x3=21, 7x4- (counted on 7 more and got 28).  That's how I would have answered in third grade as well!  I was bad at remembering my times facts.

2 and 3) Two others knew to draw 7 groups of 4 Xs... it's a laborious process.  XXXX and then circle it.  XXXX and then circle it. 7 times.  Then count.   One kid miscounted the resulting number and was off by 2 in her answer.  The other counted correctly.

4) Fourth kid write 7x4=....and then added 7 and 3 together and got 11. Yup.

I will talk to their classroom teacher about how they are doing in math now because I am curious, but I don't think this is unusual for third graders. I think what they learn, they learn just for that unit, and then it flies out their brains because they probably didn't have the underlying foundation to make it stick.  For instance, I know when I taught my own children how to multiply the x4 tables, I told them to take the x2, and the doublt it.  Right?  a X4 fact is basically a "Double Double". So 7x4- 7 doubled -- 14, now double it again -- that's 28.

But if you don't automatically know your addition doubles (7+7=14) it's hard to make use of that strategy.
And if you aren't great at mental math, it's hard to just "see" that 14+14=28 instantly.

((Anyhow, like I said, the biggest part of MY job is primarily teaching these kids to read, and they all could read the question out loud with accuracy. They were barely decoding CVC words at the end of grade 2, and now they can read "garage", "entire", "rectangular" and "represents", "amount".... so I will be happy for that at least!))

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