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#581
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
In article , toto says...
On 17 Nov 2005 13:30:57 -0800, Banty wrote: The second example is what I saw my son doing last night with percents. He's been taught a ratio method of doing percents. OK, fine as far as it goes (but it had him bamboozled as to why, if he knows that y is 80% of x, x is NOT y plus 20% of y!). For this and a HOST of other applications I handle this easily with a little analytical algebra equation. But nooo, my son resisted that. He had been taught with this little *shortcut* setup that only applied to percent questions! He was taught that the answer is found in a numerator if he's being asked and "of" question vs. - gosh I forget I don't even look at it quite that way. Yes, setting it up as a simple algebraic question boils down in this subset of cases to a simple ratio. But why teach him the ratio trick just for percents? Why? - cause it will get the quicker answers on the 8th grade regents percents questions! :-/ This one is just plain *wrong.* Is/of is a very bad shortcut. So you recognize this method from my somewhat fractured description.. You need to explain that we are talking part to whole rather than is/of. Using proportions to solve percent problems is fine (in fact it is a good way to gerneralize to many kinds of proportions), but using mnemonics that only apply to textbook problems means that kids don't have the understanding of what they are doing. The three different types of percent word problems are unknown rate, unknown whole and unknown part. I would ask him to look at the question and determine which is the unknown. A chart or table can be made that shows each and has a ? or x in the collumn for the unknown. The ration is percent/100 = part/whole when we are speaking of percents. A good way to visualize percents is to shade in squares on a 100 grid. You can then use a grid of a larger or smaller number to visualize the answer you need depending on what you are trying to find. There are many ways to solve percent problems, but the key is to understand what percent means. OK, I'll concentrate on this: The ration is percent/100 = part/whole He knows what a percent *is*. It's just the formulation he'd stuck on. Banty |
#582
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
On Thu, 17 Nov 2005 23:16:36 +0000 (UTC), Penny Gaines
wrote: Barbara Bomberger wrote: I've never known a teacher who did NOT want the outline, and the rough draft, turned in for a grade Really?**All*the*way*through*college,*and*in*ev ery*subject?**Amazing. Bizby And all through the classes of children now aging sixteen through twenty six and their college educations.**yep,*I*meant*what*I*said. FWIW, I don't remember ever having to give in an outline ever, in all my years of education in England. I think that this may very much be location thing from what I have read here... |
#583
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
In article ,
toto wrote: The *method* is not wrong, only the fact that she is not teaching him to understand the process of using ratios, but only teaching him an algorithm with a poor way of remembering where the parts of the ratio go in the equation. Many sites online use this too. It's common, but I dislike it because it works only if the problem is written in the kind of sentence that textbooks use. In the real world you are not likely to find that kind of wording. If you don't mind my butting in, textbooks that rely on standard wording in this fashion are not very good textbooks. Ideally, they should present word-based problems with a varied vocabulary, so that students rely on logic, rather than specific words, to set up the problem for themselves. -- Chookie -- Sydney, Australia (Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply) "In Melbourne there is plenty of vigour and eagerness, but there is nothing worth being eager or vigorous about." Francis Adams, The Australians, 1893. |
#584
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
"Barbara Bomberger" wrote in message ... On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 15:48:25 -0500, "Stephanie" wrote: "Barbara Bomberger" wrote in message news On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 08:32:33 -0500, "bizby40" wrote: "Chookie" wrote in message ... In article , "bizby40" wrote: I do quite a lot of writing, and knowing HOW to write from an outline is handy -- occassionally, I even do it. What is an outline exactly? Is it a precis of the paper, or do you mean the rough idea of the points you want to make? Perhaps some of both. It is a structure for the paper, intended to be written before the actual paper to help you organize your thoughts. The classic form for an outline is this: snipped It looks to me like a drafting technique rather than a summary or abstract of the paper. I'd therefore agree that it has no place in the marking pile. The outline for a paper is *not* generally turned in. It's only turned in and graded in the English classes that are specifically teaching that method of writing a paper. Bizby I've never known a teacher who did NOT want the outline, and the rough draft, turned in for a grade I think in outlines. I used to write the paper, then make an outline and pull stuff out and move it around for drafts. Barb And lots of people do. Its just that because that works in some cases, it is not the best way for all of us to research a term paper, or do a speech. It's true. The skill of outlining first and flushing out more and more detail is a good one as you get to bigger and bigger assignments as well. |
#585
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
Chookie wrote:
If you don't mind my butting in, textbooks that rely on standard wording in this fashion are not very good textbooks. Ideally, they should present word-based problems with a varied vocabulary, so that students rely on logic, rather than specific words, to set up the problem for themselves. Alas, there are a lot of bad textbooks out there. I think school systems have a lot of trouble selecting a good math text, in particular. I think the decisions are often made by a group of people who don't have a lot of expertise in the area (says she who sat on a committee to choose an elementary math text for a school system when she was *in high school*). Best wishes, Ericka |
#586
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
On 17 Nov 2005 19:45:17 -0800, Banty wrote:
OK, I'll concentrate on this: The ratio is percent/100 = part/whole He knows what a percent *is*. It's just the formulation he'd stuck on. Hope that helps -- Dorothy There is no sound, no cry in all the world that can be heard unless someone listens .. The Outer Limits |
#587
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:11:06 +1100, Chookie
wrote: In article , toto wrote: The *method* is not wrong, only the fact that she is not teaching him to understand the process of using ratios, but only teaching him an algorithm with a poor way of remembering where the parts of the ratio go in the equation. Many sites online use this too. It's common, but I dislike it because it works only if the problem is written in the kind of sentence that textbooks use. In the real world you are not likely to find that kind of wording. If you don't mind my butting in, textbooks that rely on standard wording in this fashion are not very good textbooks. Ideally, they should present word-based problems with a varied vocabulary, so that students rely on logic, rather than specific words, to set up the problem for themselves. I agree, but math textbooks seem to be poor in this area. They also tend to have problems that are very similar all in one section so that students can apply the *formula* without thinking about which formula they need to use. I think that the emphasis on plugging in numbers and computing has been around a long time at least in the US. -- Dorothy There is no sound, no cry in all the world that can be heard unless someone listens .. The Outer Limits |
#588
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
My experience is that 5-year olds are need machines. They NEED
attention, deeply, all the time, now now now! If you stand behind them the whole time, even if you don't do anything productive other than convince them you're paying attention, they'll be much more motivated to do that homework. In fact, if they know that doing homework spells their parent paying complete attention to them, they'll love homework. They might do it wrong on purpose to enhance the interaction, but ... Mine's currently 7. I stand behind their back the whole time, or sit next to them reviewing previous pages, but do my best not to do the work. I do make them correct everything, but I don't point out mistakes until they reach a stopping point (done, or want me to review their work). I do suggest strategies, and I do force them to review the directions carefully. Perhaps I shouldn't suggest strategies, I'm not sure. I'm hoping that teenagers' dislike of parental anything will take me off the hook of supervising their homework eventually. Mine already will do math homework quickly on their own, just because it's a chance for them to perform a skill they've already mastered. |
#589
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
In software, most bugs are the result of the interaction of one or two
or three features. You could try to write tests by doing one test per feature, then one test per pair of features, then one test per triple of features. But, it turns out, if you have one test cover lots of different features, it covers all those features, and all the pairs of those features, and all the triples of those features. Randomly constructed hairy tests are phenomenally good at finding bugs. They call it "pairwise testing", it's all the rage. Now, substitute "software" with "child", "feature" with "skill", "bug" with "difficulty", and "test" with "assignment". Hairy assignments that combine all sorts of random skills are going to be phenomenally good at finding skill combinations that cause children difficulty. If you're having trouble finding anything they have difficulty with, then hairy assignments are a good thing. If you're just trying to teach them the basics, hairy assignments are going to get in the way. |
#590
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Homework for a 5 year old - how much involvement needed.
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