Reply to "Teacher of the Year" quits over Common Core tests

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to ""Teacher of the Year" quits over Common Core tests"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]
Does not bide well for the future of this country that so many are in favor of mediocrity because what kids in other countries is just too hard for our snowflakes.[/quote]

No.  The standards are taking away from what makes our snowflakes great.  The standards will not improve our education.  They will create robots who are taught how to think and what to think.

[/quote]

CCSS.Math.Content.3.NF.A.2
Understand a fraction as a number on the number line; represent fractions on a number line diagram.

will turn your child into a robot?[/quote]

Rote memorization actually would turn the kids into robots.  All the "explain your thinking" does the opposite.  It may not be appropriate for younger kids, but it certainly is the opposite of turning them into robots. Quite the opposite - it really forces the child to think about how the child got the answer.

They are teaching young kids how to add in different ways.  Again, opposite of turning them into robots; it is teaching them that there are many ways to get a different answer.  This helps the kids think in different ways.  Again, opposite of turning them into robots.[/quote]

This fear of memorizing some bits of information is nonsense.  We were taught to memorize basic math facts like times tables and that has been hugely useful throughout life in all kinds of mental math situations that I deal with on an everyday basis at work and elsewhere.  Likewise, memorizing key formulae and other information has been a massive time saver for me throughout the years, and hardly made me a "robot" - if anything it allowed me to be both more creative and pragmatic, as I can more easily build up on and expand on foundational knowledge and take it further than someone who didn't.  It's frankly kind of sad to see so many kids these days who can't do basic mental math, who are lost without a calculator.[/quote]

I don't know what kinds of kids you are seeing, but my kids can do mental math without a calculator.  They are 6 and 9.  My 6 yr old uses the base 10 method of adding/subtracting to do mental math.   This was taught in school, and reinforced at home, and this is how I do mental math, too.

I think only memorizing formulas is a terrible way of teaching.  I can do integrals still, but I can't tell you why it's done the way it is because the teachers never emphasized the "whys" only the "hows".  That really doesn't help a person understand math and how to apply it to real world concepts.

A math teacher laments the rote memorization techniques.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/02/12/why-falling-behind-math/WQ34ITFotp30EPF9knjqnJ/story.html[/quote]

For practical purposes, there's a difference between drilling through the whole deep dive into why versus just trying to quickly figure out a problem.  Not all of us are Isaac Newton, who had to invent Calculus, and neither should we have to, when we just have a basic problem to solve.  "SOH CAH TOA" - fastest way to solve a triangle, ever.  Yes, certainly an explanation of how the relationships of angles and sides in a triangle work is important to teach, but once you are beyond that, memorization is hugely more pragmatic.  There's a balance to be had, but not memorizing anything at all and instead relying on people to derive everything from scratch is certainly not pragmatic - but just the same, I don't think there's any reasonable expectation for people to memorize absolutely EVERYTHING and nobody here has proposed that.[/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