Entry tags:
Tuesday: walks, phone calls, zoom
A. had two zoom calls, one for her regular classroom, one with her special ed team. It was nice to see them all and they had a nice chat. It is unclear to me whether this is going to be a helpful thing going forward. We had a good relationship with A.’s regular teacher, and have had really good success asking her for how to modify certain assignments and that has gone fine. I am not sure it makes sense to go through the special ed team versus continuing with the direct communication.
I had a great phone call with J.
I had a great phone call with K.
I had a walk with M. I walked by myself.
I was a little frustrated with the music assignment. It was huge, and included a ton of writing. What!?! OK. But the time budget allows for not much more than about 30 minutes for music one day a week, and this thing had a bunch of video, over a half dozen open response questions, and then either watch a video of a dad showing his kid how to plink out, finger at a time, a song OR download sheet music and sing the song while having a parent video it. There is no way to do all of that in less than an hour. A. watched the videos. I took a look at the video of the dad, pitched that, downloaded sheet music, decided that it was in range for R. to play, but not for A. NO WAY was I going to have her one key at a time it with one finger when she is progressing nicely actually playing using both hands. So then I went looking for an instrumental version of the song to sing along with, was not happy, so set up the studio version (not the live) of the song since I had it already, played it on the iPad, had A. sing the song with me (and the music) following along on the sheet music. Then we did it a second time and recorded it. All in, probably 45 minutes.
The math assignment was bonkers. It was this:
https://www.mathsisfun.com/puzzles/four-fours-solution.html
Only of course they did not assign that. And they did not say you could use factorial, either. The assignment was to do 1-20. We poked at it for a while and made very little progress. We tried to get R. to help out, but he was not able to think while we were around and there is no educational value in him doing it for her — only if he can do it and let her at least see some of the thought process.
I do not have any idea what the pedagogical theory or goal of this thing might possibly be, and I have to say that I have met the kind of person who thinks that this is a good example of a fun math activity. They are uniformly not great at teaching math. The teacher said try for 40 minutes then turn in whatever you have. She said some people were using factorials which was not in the instructions as given and also outside the 5th grade math curriculum; I suspect that the people who did that were just googling.
Honestly, I am wondering if maybe that was the pedagogical goal? Teach people to do math by looking at google for the answer. If that is where we have landed as a society, I will note that we should probably state that up front, rather than make people like me feel like it is cheating. I did not even bother to google it until I was typing this entry in. Clearly, I am Old.
ETA: I have found out what the pedagogical theory / goals are / were! “computing with the four operations, using order of operations, flexible thinking, and perseverance”. Given that you can only complete the assignment (or, honestly, really make much progress) if you use a lot more than the four operations, and that the flexible thinking involved in this goes down either the path of Hey Some Math Assignments Are Not Possible As Assigned or Do Math By Googling, I have devised some new strategies for approaching assignments.
(1) Set the time limit up front. Basically, we will only spend X amount of time on it.
(2) Figure out what you will do if you cannot complete it within the time limit. I am going to set the time limit a bit shorter than the budget (or my understanding of the budget), and then use the remaining amount of budgeted time to either google an answer, or, if I know how to do it, then to just do it for her.
(3) Tell A. up front that this is the new strategy. Explain that in any work negotiation, the person assigning the work has some expectations and responsibilities _and so does the person who is assigned the work_. If someone assigns you work, you are responsible for setting boundaries regarding how you will do the work, how much effort, how much time, etc.
These are actually worth while life skills, that align with my values. I am happy to teach them. Also, it is going to be real fun watching what happens when this set of values encounters school assignments going forward. I do not recommend this generally; we are pretty insulated from negative consequences (and I do not mean that in any kind of During This Time Frame way; I mean that much more globally).
I had a great phone call with J.
I had a great phone call with K.
I had a walk with M. I walked by myself.
I was a little frustrated with the music assignment. It was huge, and included a ton of writing. What!?! OK. But the time budget allows for not much more than about 30 minutes for music one day a week, and this thing had a bunch of video, over a half dozen open response questions, and then either watch a video of a dad showing his kid how to plink out, finger at a time, a song OR download sheet music and sing the song while having a parent video it. There is no way to do all of that in less than an hour. A. watched the videos. I took a look at the video of the dad, pitched that, downloaded sheet music, decided that it was in range for R. to play, but not for A. NO WAY was I going to have her one key at a time it with one finger when she is progressing nicely actually playing using both hands. So then I went looking for an instrumental version of the song to sing along with, was not happy, so set up the studio version (not the live) of the song since I had it already, played it on the iPad, had A. sing the song with me (and the music) following along on the sheet music. Then we did it a second time and recorded it. All in, probably 45 minutes.
The math assignment was bonkers. It was this:
https://www.mathsisfun.com/puzzles/four-fours-solution.html
Only of course they did not assign that. And they did not say you could use factorial, either. The assignment was to do 1-20. We poked at it for a while and made very little progress. We tried to get R. to help out, but he was not able to think while we were around and there is no educational value in him doing it for her — only if he can do it and let her at least see some of the thought process.
I do not have any idea what the pedagogical theory or goal of this thing might possibly be, and I have to say that I have met the kind of person who thinks that this is a good example of a fun math activity. They are uniformly not great at teaching math. The teacher said try for 40 minutes then turn in whatever you have. She said some people were using factorials which was not in the instructions as given and also outside the 5th grade math curriculum; I suspect that the people who did that were just googling.
Honestly, I am wondering if maybe that was the pedagogical goal? Teach people to do math by looking at google for the answer. If that is where we have landed as a society, I will note that we should probably state that up front, rather than make people like me feel like it is cheating. I did not even bother to google it until I was typing this entry in. Clearly, I am Old.
ETA: I have found out what the pedagogical theory / goals are / were! “computing with the four operations, using order of operations, flexible thinking, and perseverance”. Given that you can only complete the assignment (or, honestly, really make much progress) if you use a lot more than the four operations, and that the flexible thinking involved in this goes down either the path of Hey Some Math Assignments Are Not Possible As Assigned or Do Math By Googling, I have devised some new strategies for approaching assignments.
(1) Set the time limit up front. Basically, we will only spend X amount of time on it.
(2) Figure out what you will do if you cannot complete it within the time limit. I am going to set the time limit a bit shorter than the budget (or my understanding of the budget), and then use the remaining amount of budgeted time to either google an answer, or, if I know how to do it, then to just do it for her.
(3) Tell A. up front that this is the new strategy. Explain that in any work negotiation, the person assigning the work has some expectations and responsibilities _and so does the person who is assigned the work_. If someone assigns you work, you are responsible for setting boundaries regarding how you will do the work, how much effort, how much time, etc.
These are actually worth while life skills, that align with my values. I am happy to teach them. Also, it is going to be real fun watching what happens when this set of values encounters school assignments going forward. I do not recommend this generally; we are pretty insulated from negative consequences (and I do not mean that in any kind of During This Time Frame way; I mean that much more globally).