clair055

So....little Johnny or Susie brings home a teacher prepared worksheet filled with several math problems for homework.  At some point a parent decides to check the answers or at least review  the sheet to see what type of assignment had been given. Some of the problems are troubling: 1. "Each tree had 56 oranges.  If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" 2. "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in one week?" Yes, I'm serious.   This actually happened recently in a Georgia classroom per    this link . I hope you have a problem with these questions.  I certainly do, and I applaud the parents in this situation for complaining. Why would teachers include such insensitive questions within a math assignment? The spokesperson for Gwinnett County Schools advised the teachers were trying to provide students with a cross-curricular activity by incorporating social studies lessons into the math problem...

The following post first appeared here at History Is Elementary on January 28, 2006. It involves a lesson where I used a series of questions to help students discover new material…..linking old knowledge to new ideas. Read on…..YOU might learn something interesting about history and what goes on in your child’s classroom. Remember….this is the season of the mulligan here at History Is Elementary (see my explanation post HERE ). I’m re-posting some past efforts for your enjoyment while I’m off working on other projects. Questioning students of any age is a great way to assess and gauge your success, but I like to use questions to guide students to discover information on their own---information that I want and plan for them to discover. Discovery is an important tool in the classroom. I can provide text pages, notes, and lecture to them all day. They might be able to regurgitate information back at me, but has transfer of knowledge really occurred? Discovery, on the other hand, gives a ...