I have to admit, I do love chocolate and most things made of
chocolate. If someone put a Hostess Ho-Ho or a chocolate doughnut in front of
me...look out.
But, what if someone put one of these items in front of me and told
me I could either eat it now, or wait until they returned (45 minutes later)
and THEN I could have two! What would I do? Choose the fun, fast, immediate,
now? Or take the “good things happen to those who wait” route?
In the following video clip, four year old children were given the
same self-discipline test.
The implication is that children who learn to wait are more
self-disciplined in life. They can forego the “I need it now” and appreciate
what comes “to those who wait”.
In today’s world, we are used to immediate satisfaction – no time
to wait, too much traffic, very little time between one activity and the next,
too many toys in the playroom, and the list goes on and on! Sometimes giving in
is easier than the alternative! After watching this video, and reflecting on my
own life in Elementary and Middle School (watching Gilligan’s Island, climbing
trees, playing outside until dinner, knowing that when Mom or Dad said no…they
meant it), I realize there are some changes I would like to make in my own
family! There are parameters that should be more firmly set and adhered to.
Maybe I’ll start with this marshmallow test for the entire
family!!!!
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
A great morning at Big Pine Key! Will be out at the reef snorkeling soon! The students loved the algae lab last night!
I read for information…to stay current with regards to educational best practices...and, to gain knowledge, but rarely do I make time for a good book just for reading’s sake!
In this month’s Educational Leadership Journal, I enjoyed an article about addressing reading concerns early. The article made many great points including the importance of alphabetical and phonetic awareness, but to summarize, the answer to good reading is to have your child read, read, and read some more!
This particular paragraph struck me.
A student in the 90th percentile of reading volume (who reads 21.1 minutes per day) encounters 1.8 million words a year, whereas a student in the 10th percentile (who reads less than one minute per day) sees only 8,000 words a year. Put another way, the first student sees more words in two days than the second reads all year (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001). It’s no wonder that students with limited practice in reading (and, thus limited vocabularies and general knowledge) often struggle when they are expected to progress from reading relatively easy passages to increasingly difficult texts that require larger vocabularies, greater fluency, and more prior knowledge.
Know how important reading is to a child’s successes in school and in life. I challenge you to turn off the DVD’s in the car, lessen TV time at home, take time to help your child find a good book, and spend time reading together as a family. Whether you and your child read for fun, read for knowledge, or read to gain information, the important thing to do is read, read, read!
Oakhill Day School students from Toddler (Age 2) to Eighth Grade participated in the Read Across America Event this month. Everyone enjoyed the opportunity to Stop, Drop, and Read! (click on the image to see our readers in action)
As I observe classrooms, view lesson videos in the Day in the Life presentations, and listen to the students applaud in the Tuesday Town Meeting when asked, “How many of you like math?” I am proud…of our math instruction.
Mrs. Driskill gave me a math article titled “Mathematical Swindling” by Eugene Maier. The article made me think about my own mathematical abilities. I was confident in math, got A’s in my classes, did what my math teacher told me, and coveted the right answer. I was a math swindler! As the article states, I “remembered computational procedures and techniques and applied them to textbook exercises during a weekly quiz”.
It wasn’t until I taught math that I truly understood the majority of the concepts. I knew how to calculate and recite math facts, but there is so much more to math than just this! Math includes the way you think about numbers, the way you manipulate numbers, the way you use the memorized math facts, and the way you recognize how numbers are used in real life applications.
When teaching math, it is important to focus on concepts, on specific objectives, and “how” to best teach these concepts and objectives to meet the developmental needs of each student. Conceptual understanding, memorized algorithms, and developmental approaches mix and mingle to create true mathematical awareness. For instance, 4x5=20 is not the same as 5x4=20. Four sets of five are very different than five sets of 4 although the answer is 20 in both examples.
Research indicates that students are not truly able to think abstractly about math until they reach 10 years of age…somewhere during their 4th grade year. Throughout Early Childhood Education and Elementary Education, teachers move the students from the concrete to the semi-concrete to the semi-abstract manipulation of concepts. New concepts are best understood through hands-on exploration and discussion versus a “this is how you do it” approach.
With this said, math practice is another very important piece and one I do not want to dismiss. This includes class work, timed tests for math fact recall, homework, and Study Island.
In class, we will be developing each student…each mathematician…through concept building, algorithm exploration, and developmental math tasks. At home, we encourage ongoing computational practice, as well as weekly repetition through our Study Island program.
This is our second year utilizing Study Island as a supplemental piece of our math program with emphasis on standardized testing format. We have a building license for this web-based program which is accessible to students at school and at home. If you have internet access, your child can log on to Study Island. Although we have been using this resource at school, we now encourage you to use it at home.
Your children have the log-in information for the site – www.studyisland.com. If you have questions about this resource, feel free to contact your classroom teacher, Trish Stripling (Study Island Coordinator), or Study Island at support@studyisland.com.
Here is another excerpt from the Mathematical Swindling article.
“As part of a research project to assess children’s understanding of mathematics, an elementary school girl had been interviewed. The girl had no difficulty reciting subtraction facts. However, when the interviewer provided her with a collection of tile and asked her to demonstrate the meaning of the statement “16-9=7” with the tile, the young girl was at a loss. Finally, when urged by the interviewer to do anything at all with the tile to portray the statement, the girl used the tile to form numerals; much in the same manner she would have recorded this subtraction fact with paper and pencil. There were no meanings behind the symbols, yet this young lady would have made short work of a page of subtraction exercises.”
To end, I am very proud of the thinking that goes on in the classrooms with regards to math! Math should not be a mystery. Math should not be watered down to facts. Math deserves so much more, and so do our young mathematicians!
