lewelma
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Posts posted by lewelma
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5 hours ago, maize said:
Please do!
The thread is definitely more about curriculum, but it also categorizes different writing approaches and does work through a bunch of the books listed here. And it focuses on organizing the big goals and how to accomplish them.
ETA: I'm rereading it. Wow what a trip down memory lane. Here are some good non-curriculum posts past the first page
page 3 detailed discussion on how I taught my son to write beautiful and purposeful descriptions, with an example
page 5 post 20 and 21 (I think, boy I miss post numbers) - discussion of anthologies
Page 6 - discussion of teaching reading vs writing papers (multiple posts on page 6 are non-curriculum)
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3 hours ago, Lecka said:
I am about an inch from putting it in my trunk with give-away bags and never thinking of it again.
Do that! It definitely does not spark joy. And every time you see it, you will get mad again. Get rid of it.
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See my update on the first post! Doing well! Crossing fingers.
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I've read it twice. It is about *how* to design writing assignments to encourage thinking and engagement. Definitely not a curriculum. Half of the book is not very useful to a non-professor audience, but the other half more than makes up for this.
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23 hours ago, square_25 said:
It’s true that it’s a different set up!! I just know that for the kids I’ve worked with, focusing on what exactly each operation does using language was really helpful, whereas procedures that didn’t enhance understanding weren’t actually useful.
As I’ve probably mentioned upthread, I find purely mental math programs too constructivist: they don’t give the students enough guidance about basic mathematical structures. I can well imagine the issues you’re describing as a result!
I don't know much about how primary school math works here, just the results I see with almost every student who seeks me out. There is just a huge disconnect between primary and secondary math -- even the curriculum documents are written by two different non-connected teacher groups. And intermediate math is basically a joke. Stick the kids on a computer and let them self teach.
So I actually don't like teaching algorithmic methods for computation, I much prefer mental math. But this must be connected to some sort of understanding that you are actually doing a multiplication problem even though your mental math calculation is repeated addition or piecemeal multiplication. If not, algebraic skills are completely foreign. How can you possibly understand xy let alone set up an algebraic word problem, when you don't know you are multiplying. So for 8*14, students here would do 8*10=80+5*8=40+80=120-8=112 And they would write it that way too. If you try to clarify what multiplication is, they just don't get it -- they don't think that way. So xy is completely meaningless and they can't use algebraic skills to work real life problems.
Most students I have worked with have no idea that if you have 80 pies split between 8 people, that you are dividing the pies among the people. So when you have x pies split between y people, you are sunk. It only gets worse from there.
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5 hours ago, square_25 said:
We didn’t do procedures for ages (as I said, we’re starting them now), and my daughter is really strong with word problems. So I don’t think the lack of procedures is the issue. Perhaps an insufficient focus on definitions is.
I find it hard to believe that your dd would ever struggle with the issues most of my students have. She has you!
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Please define biblically sound, as there will be a lot of different opinions on that.
That said, I would suggest easy college textbooks over any jr high/high school textbooks. My favorites:
College Physics by Knight et al
Earth Science by Tarbuck et al
Chemistry by Chang
Biology: The Unity and Diversity of Life by Taggart et al.
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Not showing your workings is actually not the problem. The problem is when students are not *also* taught how to link word problems to the actual operation being performed (add, subtract, multiply, divide) or taught how to write math in a formal way. Mental maths teaches students how to break numbers up and put them back together in creative ways. This is a great thing. Without good numeracy skills, students simply do things by rote, which is just memory not math skills. However, when mental math is done to the exclusion of writing out math formally, students become *very* confused in algebraic word problems.
What happens in primary school programs with a mental math focus is that students see problems as repeated subtraction rather than division, or a series of operations mixed up, or some such confusion in the actual operation. When you ask them to write their workings, I call it "crap out of your head". It is typically completely unclear what they have done, with equal signs misused, unorganized numbers/equations/numberlines, no logical order, and then the correct answer at the end. This does not set students up well for high school math. They fall over completely in algebraic word problems because they cannot recognize the operation required, they have no idea how to do proper workings, and have been trained to work through intuition rather than logical steps. Here in NZ, students struggle through 8th and 9th grade with these issues, and by the end of 9th grade are failing. At this point, they come to me.
I teach them to separate out computation (by calculator, algorithm, or mental math) in a box to the side. Then they have to show proper algebraic workings -- working always down. I show them which steps are required, and which are optional. NZ actually marks on "mathematical statements", unorganized crap out of your head will be marked wrong.
So it is not mental math per se. It is a program limited to this that leads to a major issue in the transition to high school math.
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4 hours ago, Monica_in_Switzerland said:
I'd like to also talk about homeschooling with philosophical minimalism, but I'm out of time for now!
I would love to hear your thoughts. I think I was the one that steered the thread towards this. I live in 600sq ft, and have only the resources that 'spark joy,' so I have definitely conquered stuff. But that does not mean that the result is a minimalist approach to homeschooling. I have to work to keep focused on my goals and the things that make a difference to my children's education.
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Engaging Ideas. Best book on teaching writing that is out there, hands down. Glad to see EKS recommends it too!
I have read and evaluated 30+ books/curriculum. Years ago, I wrote a thread up comparing them, and then started grabbing other good lists of resources people posted elsewhere on this board and added them to the thread also. I keep posting it recently, and it makes a big box when I link which makes me feel like I am self-promoting. But if you want me to link to it again, I will. 🙂
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4 hours ago, drjuliadc said:
Super motivated? You would throw my kids out post haste.
I assumed it was just math. You know that is only $13,000 US. Notice how I actually calculated that.
Haha. With a waiting list until 2021 I can pick and choose. 🙂 I have also been known to become 'too busy' when a parent tries to micromanage me or doesn't like my policy of paying if your kid comes or not. So you as the parent also have to be nice to me!! As for currency exchange, it is wild here. Since I have lived in NZ (21 years) it has been as low as 0.39 and as high as 0.91. Currently, as it drops, we are paying more and more for MIT. Our bill went up 7K last year due to currency translation. sigh. But as I posted in the tutoring thread, my goal is to make the same salary as a top teacher here with me working only 20 hours a week. I figure since my hours are restricted to after school, people are paying me to be available. So currency exchange masks cost of living here and I make double the hourly wage of a top teacher (and I do charge for noncontact hours). But I do have friends who say I should raise my rates again. 🙂
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5 hours ago, Ktgrok said:
Well, to be fair, the younger one IS 7 already,
Ooops. Saw your siggy and assumed he was 6.
To clarify a bit, my definition of minimalism meshes with Becker's idea of promoting and focusing on what is most important by eliminating that which is not. So not having less just to have less, but having less that distracts from the important stuff.
So what is important to you?
So for example, my younger ds now is 16 and wants to solve complex world problems maybe through a place like the World Bank or more local problems by being a mayor. So what is important for his homeschool? What stands out is that he must learn to embrace complexity, he must learn to see different actors' perspectives on issues, and he must learn to see nuance and shades of grey. This means that I must create a structure for his education that requires him to make sense of many many different sources for single large scale problems. That is definitely not simplicity or minimalism from a traditional point of view, but does match your definition of focusing on what is most important. What do we then eliminate? Any single perspective course unless it is a get-er-done class.
So what is it that *you* want to have your 1st and 4th grader learn? Do you have clearly stated goals? Seems like you want to align your actions and resources to your goals. This makes sense to me.
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Awesome! Well time we moved past the 5 paragraph essay!
Have you seen my ds's essay on the accelerated board? Way way beyond the 5-paragraph essay and it was crazy hard for him to write! Purpose and Audience!!
Ruth in NZ
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When my ds applied to university, I listed "US history in a world context" on his transcript. And in his course descriptions, I described the course from 1840-1970. He got into 3 great schools (CMU, UM, MIT), so it couldn't have mattered that much.
Depth vs Breadth. I'm all for Depth.
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Oh, someone asked for some NZ content. The best, cohesive, deep-thinking work can be found in the example tasks that NCEA (NZ Certification of Educational Achievement) posts on their website. Internals are large single tasks done during the year and created by schools based on how they taught the set content. Externals are high end exams done on a set day in November that are the same for all kids (check out the 12th grade probability exam and distributions exams -- very impressive!). The links below give multiple examples of each task/assessment that if worked through with care can really increase a student's level.
Remember that NZ is not a percent correct system; rather it is a levels of thinking system. So each assessment has 3 levels of work within each task/exam: 1) achieve is regurgitation and understanding of concepts, 2) merit work is relational thinking and applications to real life, and 3) excellence work is abstraction, generalizations, and insight. Work through multiple tasks/exams and you will up your level of thinking.
Level 1 (10th grade)
Internals (numeracy, measurement, statistics, linear algebra, basic trig, transformation geometry and many others) http://ncea.tki.org.nz/Resources-for-Internally-Assessed-Achievement-Standards/Mathematics-and-statistics/Level-1-Mathematics-and-statistics
externals (algebra, graphing, geometry, probability) https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/assessment/search.do?query=Mathematics&view=exams&level=01
Level 2 (11th grade)
internals (advanced graphing, intermediate trig, coordinate geometry, bivariate stats, multivariate stats, questionaires, experimentation, network analysis, and many others) http://ncea.tki.org.nz/Resources-for-Internally-Assessed-Achievement-Standards/Mathematics-and-statistics/Level-2-Mathematics-and-statistics
externals (algebra 2, basic calculus, probability) https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/assessment/search.do?query=Mathematics&view=exams&level=02
Level 3 (12th grade)
internals (advanced trig, network analysis, conics, time series analysis, multivariate analysis, bivariate analysis, simultaneous equations, linear programming, and others) http://ncea.tki.org.nz/Resources-for-Internally-Assessed-Achievement-Standards/Mathematics-and-statistics/Level-3-Mathematics-and-statistics
externals (differentiation, integration, complex numbers, probability, and distributions) https://www.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/assessment/search.do?query=Mathematics&view=exams&level=03
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Hope that is helpful! I love comparing the American to NZ system, because I grew up and trained to be a teacher in the American system, but have taught in the NZ system. Fascinating the difference.
Ruth in NZ
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Precalculus is usually trig, coordinate geometry, and complex numbers if I remember the American system right. Here in NZ, precalculus and calculus are taught simultaneously over 2 years, rather than sequentially.
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3 hours ago, drjuliadc said:
Lewelma, I would SO pay you $20,000 to tutor my kids. Is that for the whole three years?
Aw, thanks! Yes, but just for maths unless I really like your kid and he/she is super motivated. 🙂 And if so, then I have also tutored Physics, Chemistry, Biology, English, Media Studies, Geography, and even Academic PE!!! Haha. I've got a lot of work to keep up with so many subjects and their national exams! I have a couple of families where I'm on their third kid. 🙂
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3 hours ago, PeterPan said:
LOL I would take out everything, throw pillows on the floor, and then bring in one small washtub of books and a deck of playing cards. That's your room
Yes! Completely agree. I'm just going to follow you around this week and say, "what she said." 🙂
Up to age 7, we did 10-15 minutes of handwriting/copywork, and then lots of reading, read-alouds, and playing shop. That was it. I should have gotten a washtub!!!
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42 minutes ago, PeterPan said:
but I agree eventually it becomes this natural selection contest, where only a certain type of student survives.
I think you are right. I also think in addition to a student's learning style, drive, and EF skills, it has to do with speed of intellectual maturity. Some kids take longer to mature. They may end up with a learning style that matches university, and drive and great EF skills they would allow them to succeed, but they might just develop these things later than 'allowed' in our current system.
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37 minutes ago, PeterPan said:
So then you're back to embracing what you need to be doing and letting go what you don't.
This too!
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36 minutes ago, PeterPan said:
that goes back to goals and knowing why you're doing things.
This.
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5 hours ago, annegables said:
I fully agree with this statement! The longer I homeschool the more I realize that the bolded is what I think has killed most adult's desire to learn deeply.
I read on here a while before jumping in to the conversations, but you and 8filltheheart have always inspired me with how you have rejected the bolded, painstakingly forged your own path (and watched your kids blaze their own trails), lived in the uncertainty, and ended up with young adults who are interesting and self-directed. That takes guts.
Well, thanks for the kind words. I'm honored to be categorized with 8, because she inspires me too!!
My younger has also taught me quite a bit about deep learning. He is a kid who is completely unwilling to learn without deep conceptual understanding. And this is painfully slow from the point of view of a standard timetable set down from on high.
Earlier this year, I decided to start the traditional high school science, starting with mechanics in physics. Because It was going to be his first more 'rigorous' science with a textbook and proper problems (before we had been reading books like The Way Things Work), I wanted to get him used to this style of learning. He wanted to learn physics because he knows he will need it to be a geographer (earthquakes, volcanoes, water flow, etc), so he was motivated and ready to dig in. And I chose mechanics to start because it was so plug and chug, so from my point of view, easy. So I made my 10 week plan, and our goal was 3 pages a day. Read about a new idea, do the practice problem, rinse and repeat. It was a disaster. Mechanics is a massive oversimplification which at a high school level completely goes against intuition because you drop out things like friction. And to this boy it made no sense. I had a couple of really good resources and just kept pushing him through it. Just do 3 pages a day. Do the math. It will make sense as you practice. 3 pages. 3 pages. I just kept thinking that this is *the* way we do rigorous science. I have the national exam, I know where he needs to be, I have set the schedule that will allow him to get through physics and chemistry by university.. But this was a big fat mistake because he did the 3 pages and the math and the practice and finished 10 weeks of learning. He was even getting the problems right, but with NO idea what mechanics was. He told me after 10 weeks "I don't even know what Force is." Um. Well, OK. What the hell have we been doing for 10 weeks? Apparently wasting our time.
So during the 2 week break, we brainstormed. What had gone wrong? Why the big fat fail? And we decided that he needed to discover the principles on his own to make those deep connections. I still wanted to get through set content, and not have this a free for all bunny trail exercise, because he is in 10th grade and needs to be getting ready for university. But clearly what we did with mechanics was a bust. So we laid out another 10 week plan. 4 weeks for exploration - anything you want to study on waves (our next physics topic). We got curved mirrors, lenses, lasers, water in the bathtub, etc. He played, he explored. He watched you-tube videos. Then the next 6 weeks, he would follow his own path to get through set content. He had a 6-page summary/notes page, and he would dig deeper into each topic by more exploration, more you tube, but this time also in-context real-life problems, not just drill. He would tick off topics as he mastered them, but the goal was mastery NOT just doing the 'work.' And only he could decide if he had truly mastered a topic. This approach was a mixture of self-directed exploration but with a goal of set content. And at the end of 10 weeks, he had covered about 1/2 of the content he had covered in the 10-week mechanics unit, but this time he actually knew it. And now 5 months later, he still knows it in a deep and meaningful way, but mechanics is completely gone.
For me, these two examples represent the difference between rigorous busywork and deep learning. In mechanics, the goal was to get through the content efficiently and in a teacher top-down way with the goal of being about to take the national exam at the end. If it wasn't on the exam, we weren't studying it; and if it was on the exam, he needed to be able to do at the end of 10 weeks even if it made no sense, because I had budgeted 10 weeks because that was how much time I felt we could spend on this one topic. Rigorous sure, but busywork because he was just going through the motions to please me and the test. This led to disengagement, frustration, and at times anger.
How had I lost my way? And so quickly? I think it is because we are brainwashed to see information as being *taught* rather than *learned*. We don't trust the student because they don't know what they don't know, and because exploration-style learning covers LESS content in the same period of time, so it is inefficient. But it is only inefficient from a teaching point of view -- how much can I cover? It is not inefficient from a student point of view - how much I have learned? I am OK with getting through half the content of a schooly education, if the half that my boy knows is deeply understood and able to be applied to new contexts in creative ways.
So lesson learned. Keep to our long standing path of *learning* not *schooling*.
Ruth in NZ
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4 hours ago, annegables said:
I dont know if my answer is really in line with the question, but when my kids (6th, 4th, and 2nd) are asked how much school they do every day, they tend to answer a time that doesnt remotely reflect how much education is being done (I began homeschooling for academic reasons and lean rigorous). But they are answering truthfully because what feels like school for them is a small fraction of their academic day. None of them count reading, history (audiobooks, documentaries, discussions, books), science (we are a science kind of home), read-alouds (carefully selected by me to reflect our history focus for the year), or the hours we spend walking and talking every day about what they are learning. This means that my kids only count math (and they like and are good at math), grammar, and writing as school.
Minimalism can be a lot of work, but it is mostly behind the scenes, so to speak. What is experienced by others is the end result. But there is effort done by the minimalist: curating their stuff, saying no to stuff, etc. My kids experience the end result of my behind-the-scenes work.
Yup, well said. My older boy only perceived 5 hour days for his homeschool, which would have impossible given what he accomplished and where he is at. It was all the reading, talking, and thinking that led to his deep insights and knowledge. But he would have considered them just part of being in our family and life in general.
My younger perceives that he is only taking 3 courses this year in high school - math, chemistry, geography. But he has a full load, they are just interwoven so he doesn't feel constantly pressured and rushed.
So I completely agree, minimalism takes work in the background. A relaxed life in a rigorous homeschool takes planning, prioritizing, and thinking out-of-the box.
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I think minimalism in homeschooling has less to do with reducing stuff and more to do with doing less. Fewer classes, more complex but fewer assignments, more time to interact with deep ideas. Complexity in high school does require interpreting and synthesizing multiple resources and perceptions. Multiple of anything often feels like it is not minimalism. But I have found that bringing together history, economics, political science, geography, and current events into a single massive project feels minimal because we can go deep into ONE big idea.
I do live in a 600sq ft apartment so I do know a thing or 2 about minimalism, but I embrace my 30 books/curriculum on writing because each one offers a different perspective. And complexity breeds deeper learning. Just my 2 cents. 🙂
Ruth in NZ
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SAT Math - pretty bad situation - UPDATE #2
in High School and Self-Education Board
Posted
She came today with a 620 in math!!! This from a kid who in February could not have done 2x+5=7.