In the meantime, the kids coming up won't be able to be engineers. But they can always get a communications degree.
The right answer doesn't hurt
Joanne Jacobs blog
Math scores are lagging in Washington state, even as reading scores are improving. The Tri-City Herald reports:
Erin Bennett doesn't really care that her students can solve 12 x 3 = 36.
When the Columbia Elementary School teacher conducts a math lesson, she's more interested in how her students solve the equation, and if they can explain themselves well. And the right answer doesn't hurt.
"You did it in a really cool way," she told student Jarred Brutscher. "Tell us how you did it."
Brutscher wrinkled his nose and launched into a quiet explanation of his thought process: the fourth-grader knew that 10 x 3 = 30, and 2 x 3 = 6. So using those two equations, he deduced the answer.
The St. Paul Pioneer Press has a story on "disciplinary literacy" in middle schools.
In science, for example, that might mean students collect leaves and start classifying them themselves rather than reading about taxonomy in a text and getting a lecture about it, said (Marty) Davis, a coach brought in to help science teacher Sarah Weaver run her class according to the new model.
"(It's) doing science but learning content," Davis said.
As seventh-grader Brian King summarized it after hearing the science teachers introduce the concept: "They don't tell you, they let you figure it out."
English teacher Suzanne Myhre said she intends to have her students form strong opinions on the works they'll be reading as a way of deepening their understanding.
I wonder how she'll do that if she didn't do it before.
Students in Tara Brash's math class were asked Tuesday to figure out how to form eight triangles out of six toothpicks.
They were given some time to work on their own, but were soon grouped with others to share their ideas.
"In math, there is not always one single correct answer," Brash told the students.
But usually there is.
Group work is a hallmark of the new approach, as is the posting of student work and ideas.
In Courtney Major's history class later in the day, student responses to the questions "What is history?" and "Why study history?" were recorded on big pieces of newsprint taped to the wall at the front of the classroom.
Major complimented one student for thoroughly recounting the answers given by his group members.
Gathering and reporting others' perspectives is what historians do, Major said after class, and her goal is to "(lay) the foundation for them being the historians."
They won't be historians but maybe they'll be poll-takers. After all, in the brave new world, opinion is everything."
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