Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids shouldn’t be spending more time learning how to gather information, most of the time should be spent learning the material.

This is completely wrong. How to gather and organize information is a key skill that kids need to learn to succeed later.

When it's done in a deliberate and thoughtful way at a point where children can handle it, absolutely. Not in middle school, and not because teachers are clearly lazy and ignorant and just can't be bothered to regroup and organize their sources.

Anonymous wrote:
Scientific researcher again.

Teachers are not adequately trained in this country. Despite their love of children and enthusiasm, they are unfortunately often the bottom of the barrel academically. That's why we rank so low in international rankings of reading and math, while spending so much on education. We should invest in hiring smarter teachers (select only the best, design more rigorous education programs, pay much better), who will be able to understand and adapt to the multiple changes in curriculae they will experience over their teaching career, and implement them intelligently, always putting the students' development first.

I think that's only part of the problem. What has caused this trend away from textbooks? It seems clear that it does not improve the learning environment and in fact harms it. I would think a moderately skilled teacher would do better with a text to teach from, instead of having to start from scratch gathering materials.

Anonymous wrote:Kids shouldn’t be spending more time learning how to gather information, most of the time should be spent learning the material.

This is completely wrong. How to gather and organize information is a key skill that kids need to learn to succeed later.

Scientific researcher again.

Teachers are not adequately trained in this country. Despite their love of children and enthusiasm, they are unfortunately often the bottom of the barrel academically. That's why we rank so low in international rankings of reading and math, while spending so much on education. We should invest in hiring smarter teachers (select only the best, design more rigorous education programs, pay much better), who will be able to understand and adapt to the multiple changes in curriculae they will experience over their teaching career, and implement them intelligently, always putting the students' development first.

Two suggestions:

First, if your child truly does not know what's going to be covered on an exam (is this English test going to be on the book we just read, or is it a test of essay structure/composition where the subject will be given in the exam), she needs to email the teacher and get clarity on that rather than trying to guess.

Second, if the material your child is expected to learn is scattered among several sources, this is a great opportunity to teach your child how to organize and study as they go along rather than trying to pull it all together at the end, which is an important skill for them to have as adults. Create a suitable organization system depending on the class, and then each day your child spends a little time reviewing material and organizing it. For instance, if there are class notes, print-outs from the school website and references to websites to review, then each day as she reads those materials for homework, she can print them out, highlight/make notes as she reads, and then put them in a binder with her class notes from that day. Then when it's time for the test, all of the material they've covered since the last test will be gathered in one place and she an devote her time to reviewing the substance rather than collecting the pages.

Kids shouldn’t be spending more time learning how to gather information, most of the time should be spent learning the material.

Went to college here in US and that how it was the whole 4 years. The stuff I was expected to know was all over the place - handouts, notes, online somewhere, maybe some in a textbook if you are lucky. Studying for a test was like a treasure hunt. sometime you found it, sometime you didn't. Luckily there was the multiple choice, so my chances of picking the right answer was pretty good. I learned nothing though.
In Europe we had textbooks in all subject. We were tested only on the chapter or chapters, but never multiple choice. You were expected to write essay style answers usually.
Here every class is one big research - mostly looking for the lose leaf handouts. Why not just add a research class if it's so important.

Anonymous wrote:It's all because of the death of the textbook.

When I was in middle and high school, we had a couple of textbooks to study from for each subject, and we knew what chapters to work on.

Now because schools can't afford textbooks and want to look cool with online tech, teachers assign various sources under the guise of "it's good for the kids to do their own research". When multiple teachers start multiplying sources, it gets messy at the middle school level because some children are not developmentally ready for that level of multitasking.

I'm a scientific researcher. Research is my life. This is not how you teach organizational and research skills to students. They need the basics down before they can do it.

OP here. I totally agree. My kids are spending more time clicking around than learning the material.

Anonymous wrote:I disagree with the people saying for the parent to step away and I usually might agree. I wasn't until I got involved and started questioning things that we exposed that year after year this teacher's class struggled because she had poor executive functioning. Disorganized teachers are hoping you will not get involved and their poor habits will not be exposed. Even better if you just contact other classmates and the blind can lead the blind. It takes a village to get schools to make teachers change their ways and get help. If we all back off these people just continue to be a mess.

Hadn't had my coffee. I posted this and am not the OP. I am talking about an experience with a teacher my kid currently has. HOT MESS.

I disagree with the people saying for the parent to step away and I usually might agree. I wasn't until I got involved and started questioning things that we exposed that year after year this teacher's class struggled because she had poor executive functioning. Disorganized teachers are hoping you will not get involved and their poor habits will not be exposed. Even better if you just contact other classmates and the blind can lead the blind. It takes a village to get schools to make teachers change their ways and get help. If we all back off these people just continue to be a mess.

It's all because of the death of the textbook.

When I was in middle and high school, we had a couple of textbooks to study from for each subject, and we knew what chapters to work on.

Now because schools can't afford textbooks and want to look cool with online tech, teachers assign various sources under the guise of "it's good for the kids to do their own research". When multiple teachers start multiplying sources, it gets messy at the middle school level because some children are not developmentally ready for that level of multitasking.

I'm a scientific researcher. Research is my life. This is not how you teach organizational and research skills to students. They need the basics down before they can do it.

Your kids need to reach out more to other classmates rather than to rely on you, if they're serious about it. The best you can do is to follow the syllabus and homework, without actually attending classes. Also, they should be old enough to figure it out and study on their own.

I thought I was with you, but when I read your description it didn't seem like the unorganized hell my kid coped with.

You are correct about some teachers being chaotic, though.

Your kids are probably at good ages for you to let them do their own studying for tests. It won't be long before they are away at college and it will be good for them to develop confidence in their ability to do this on their own before they get to college.

The teacher is likely telling them what is on the test: they just need to use that information. Do they maybe have friends from their classes with whom they could study?

My kids are in 7th and 9th grade in MoCo.
They complain that they never know what to study for a particular exam. The teachers seem to post all sorts of information in many different places, seldom clearly delineating what material will be tested. It all seems sloppy and unnecessary.
Just to sit down with my daughter to study biology requires several different slides and lots of clicking through documents and web pages, wasting precious time. The other day, when I finally collected what we thought would be on a Spanish test, we were off and my son did poorly.
I can't imagine that this is efficient at all. Would it be too easy to say "test tomorrow: sections 1,2,3 and vocab list dated 12/18.17"?