I was reading an article in the Kennebec Journal on the trials and tribulations of being in eighth grade.
I remember eighth grade. I was not the best year of my life.
There certainly are many changes taking place in an adolescent's body, and also mind. And, according to this article, the changes can affects a child's test scores on all those standardized tests they have to take.
The basic gist of the article, is that younger children are adult-pleasers, while older children gradually lose that quality and become more interested in their own individuality and the approval of their peers. This affects test scores negatively. At least that's the theory behind the drop in test scores in this school district.
Essentially, what the school system is saying is that scores might have dropped because kids tried less.
I don't buy it.
I've been a public school teacher for nearly a decade, I've administered countless standardized tests. I've also been on committees in my school system that looked at our standardized test scores from kindergarten to 12th grade. In other words, for a non-administrator, I've got a lot of experience looking at and thinking about standardized test scores across all the grades.
Although, while giving a test, you will sometimes see a student just "christmas tree" their answer sheet, or bubble in a column of C's, that's actually pretty rare.
By far, most of what I see is student's working hard to do well.
Yet, as the students age, they don't do well, in general. On average, they do more and more poorly. Some people, like those mentioned in the article try to explain this trend with the "adolescence" argument. That is, adolescence is a period where kids withdraw from adulthood, form their own cliques, have their own tribal rituals, and generally do not interact with adults and the rest of society in a way that is remotely human.
A lot of educators buy into this myth.
So, do some parents.
It's not true. While the "experts" tell us that adolescence is a period in a human's life when she is singularly anti-social, I've found the adolescents I teach to be very much a part of the society they live in.
Yes, they listen to music that I don't listen to.
Yes, they have a lingo that I don't immediately understand.
No, they're not on another planet, scheduled to return when they're twenty-five or so.
For the most part, the kids I teach are interested in bettering their lives. They're also interested in the world they live in.
In case you're wondering, I don't teach kids from the upper strata of society, far from it. I would say, socio-economically, my students draw from the bottom third.
If find them to be engaging, interested, and in pursuit of better lives.
When I watch them take standardized tests, I feel like I'm looking at the room full of kids who are trying to do well.
Unfortunately, they don't actually do that well, at all.
What I notice in test scores myself is that the number of students who do poorly increases dramatically from third grade to eleventh grade.
As a mathematically trained person, I'm quite capable of thinking about data, and what I see can have basically two explanations.
One: students become disinterested, and thus their scores decline.
Two: as the material gets harder, the students gradually fall farther and farther behind.
The second explanation is the one I would bet is correct.
We call it social promotion--the idea that a student needs to graduate to the next grade, or even the next level of schooling merely because of his age.
Many of the students I teach never make really good grades in math. They get by with barely passing grades. Like people who gain a few pounds every few years only to find themselves really obese, these students carry a growing lack of mathematical knowledge with them from grade to grade.
At some point, usually around ninth grade, their deficit catches up with them, and they start failing, instead of barely passing.
What's to be done?
Well, the institution of school can change. (It's changing even now.)
Most importantly, parents and their children can take charge of their own education.
I know the idea of personal responsibility doesn't sit well with some, but you have to admit, it's uniquely American!
Part of the problem with parents being responsible for their children's education is that most parents couldn't pass a fifth-grade mathematics test. I don't mean that to be hurtful. It's just that most folks daily lives don't require anything beyond basic arithmetic, if that.
So, what are you to do?
Well, hiring a tutor for your child is certainly a good option. Call a local college or university. I'm sure you can find a math or physics student who needs extra money. When I was in school, I would have jumped at the chance to tutor a few kids for money.
If you can't hire a tutor, you can always subscribe to a math learning service on the Internet. MathFoundation Online Math Courses has a wealth of stuff that can help your child. This is a paid subscription service, but for the money, it's worth it. Look at it this way, it costs a lot less than a tutor. Even a college student!
Make Your Own "Skillometer" With Printable Math Worksheets
Yet more reason to use your own printable math worksheets!
I just read a very interesting article about a popular software package called Cognition Tutor. Over 1000 schools use this company's software to help tutor students in algebra, geometry,and integrated math.
I like the idea, especially the part where it give teachers more flexibility to interact with the poorer performing students.
Buying software like this for your own child would be next to impossible. I haven't checked the price for a single user license, but I bet it's pretty expensive.
If you're a teacher like me, you could try to get your school system to purchase the software for you.
Unfortunately, yet another year of students would come and go before you knew whether you were going to get it or not.
Sometimes as both a teacher and a parent you just have to roll up your sleeves and create what you need yourself.
In this case, copying what this software does would be fairly easy.
You could do this with printable math worksheets.
In the article, one of the key concepts in the software is what they call a "skillometer". The software keeps track of the level of problem the student is doing. The harder the level, the bigger the skillometer reading. (The skillometer looks like a bar that changes color and length according to the student's level of skill.)
With a series of worksheets graded for difficulty, this would not be too hard to do by hand.
Knowing children as well as I do, I can guarantee you they would eat this up! It would be a huge motivation. Parents as well as teachers could do this. You could put your own child's skillometer up on the refrigerator!
Now, all you need is the worksheets.
You can get free worksheets all over the internet. But what I recommend is a subscription service called Math Foundation. They have worksheets and also teaching software that is quite good. It's also low priced, $39.99 a year. For what you get, that's a deal!
Just Click here to be taken to Math Foundation's webpage.
I just read a very interesting article about a popular software package called Cognition Tutor. Over 1000 schools use this company's software to help tutor students in algebra, geometry,and integrated math.
I like the idea, especially the part where it give teachers more flexibility to interact with the poorer performing students.
Buying software like this for your own child would be next to impossible. I haven't checked the price for a single user license, but I bet it's pretty expensive.
If you're a teacher like me, you could try to get your school system to purchase the software for you.
Unfortunately, yet another year of students would come and go before you knew whether you were going to get it or not.
Sometimes as both a teacher and a parent you just have to roll up your sleeves and create what you need yourself.
In this case, copying what this software does would be fairly easy.
You could do this with printable math worksheets.
In the article, one of the key concepts in the software is what they call a "skillometer". The software keeps track of the level of problem the student is doing. The harder the level, the bigger the skillometer reading. (The skillometer looks like a bar that changes color and length according to the student's level of skill.)
With a series of worksheets graded for difficulty, this would not be too hard to do by hand.
Knowing children as well as I do, I can guarantee you they would eat this up! It would be a huge motivation. Parents as well as teachers could do this. You could put your own child's skillometer up on the refrigerator!
Now, all you need is the worksheets.
You can get free worksheets all over the internet. But what I recommend is a subscription service called Math Foundation. They have worksheets and also teaching software that is quite good. It's also low priced, $39.99 a year. For what you get, that's a deal!
Just Click here to be taken to Math Foundation's webpage.
Are Printable Math Worksheets The Answer?
Okay, I'm a dinosaur--I love printable math worksheets! Let me tell you why.
I get depressed every time I read something in the newspaper about American schooling.
We're always behind!
We lag most developed nations in mathematics proficiency. In a recent study, the U. S. ranked 24 out of 29 developed nations. We were behind Poland, Hungary, and Spain!
What's worse, is we're falling farther and farther behind. Another study done only a few years before ranked us in the middle of the pack, not at the end.
What's the cause?
One researcher, Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says that our standardized tests are too easy. Which is why when we only look at what's happening in our country, it looks like we're gaining ground, but when compared internationally, we're actually falling behind.
Loveless places the blame on the fact that we've "downplayed arithmetic." He says American students don't understand how to work with fractions, as well as decimals.
I would have to say as a professional teacher, I've found that to be the case.
My fifteen and sixteen year old students come to me incapable of adding one third and one half without a calculator. Even with a calculator, they can't do it eighty percent of the time.
If we believe Loveless, what's needed is focused attention on a very narrow, but oh so important, area of elementary math, arithmetic.
One of my favorite strategies for helping students with these problems is to find something specific they have a problem with (not hard), then teach them how to do it, and have them do a lot of practice with printable math worksheets.
Printable math worksheets are great in that they are naturally focused, and also a student's progress is easily measurable.
Here's the article in the Washington Post where I read about our international rankings in test scores.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
I get depressed every time I read something in the newspaper about American schooling.
We're always behind!
We lag most developed nations in mathematics proficiency. In a recent study, the U. S. ranked 24 out of 29 developed nations. We were behind Poland, Hungary, and Spain!
What's worse, is we're falling farther and farther behind. Another study done only a few years before ranked us in the middle of the pack, not at the end.
What's the cause?
One researcher, Tom Loveless at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says that our standardized tests are too easy. Which is why when we only look at what's happening in our country, it looks like we're gaining ground, but when compared internationally, we're actually falling behind.
Loveless places the blame on the fact that we've "downplayed arithmetic." He says American students don't understand how to work with fractions, as well as decimals.
I would have to say as a professional teacher, I've found that to be the case.
My fifteen and sixteen year old students come to me incapable of adding one third and one half without a calculator. Even with a calculator, they can't do it eighty percent of the time.
If we believe Loveless, what's needed is focused attention on a very narrow, but oh so important, area of elementary math, arithmetic.
One of my favorite strategies for helping students with these problems is to find something specific they have a problem with (not hard), then teach them how to do it, and have them do a lot of practice with printable math worksheets.
Printable math worksheets are great in that they are naturally focused, and also a student's progress is easily measurable.
Here's the article in the Washington Post where I read about our international rankings in test scores.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
Printable Math Worksheets -- A Great Way To Keep Kids Focused
Printable math worksheets might be just the answer to a problem that plagues teachers. How to keep kids focused on their work.
If you've ever taught, I'm sure you've had the problem of kids' minds wandering.
After all, if you're fourteen (or even, forty-five) there have to be a world of things more interesting than struggling with algebra.
I'm a professional teacher. I can't tell you how many times a day I tell my students to "stay on task." (That's teacherese for "quit daydreaming.")
Are there any solutions to this problem?
I know of at least one, but it's not what you would expect.
We teachers tend to get caught up in what's new, forgetting that we've been successfully teaching humans for literally thousands of years. So, sometimes its' the old, out-of-fashion stuff that will solve the problem, instead of some new flavor-of-the-week idea.
One way I solve the student attention problem is with the lowly worksheet.
Worksheets, when used with judgement and discression, are a great way to make students focus on a specific type of problem.
If, for instance, students are having trouble factoring, well, more practice with a few well thought out math worksheets could be the answer.
You can monitor a student's progress easily with worksheets. It's easy to see when a student is not working, for instance. It's also very easy to see if she understands the concept.
Don't forget the lowly printable math worksheet!
Although it reminds me a lot of when we went to school, worksheets might be an idea we want to keep.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
If you've ever taught, I'm sure you've had the problem of kids' minds wandering.
After all, if you're fourteen (or even, forty-five) there have to be a world of things more interesting than struggling with algebra.
I'm a professional teacher. I can't tell you how many times a day I tell my students to "stay on task." (That's teacherese for "quit daydreaming.")
Are there any solutions to this problem?
I know of at least one, but it's not what you would expect.
We teachers tend to get caught up in what's new, forgetting that we've been successfully teaching humans for literally thousands of years. So, sometimes its' the old, out-of-fashion stuff that will solve the problem, instead of some new flavor-of-the-week idea.
One way I solve the student attention problem is with the lowly worksheet.
Worksheets, when used with judgement and discression, are a great way to make students focus on a specific type of problem.
If, for instance, students are having trouble factoring, well, more practice with a few well thought out math worksheets could be the answer.
You can monitor a student's progress easily with worksheets. It's easy to see when a student is not working, for instance. It's also very easy to see if she understands the concept.
Don't forget the lowly printable math worksheet!
Although it reminds me a lot of when we went to school, worksheets might be an idea we want to keep.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
More Uses For Printable Math Worksheets
If you thought the days of printable math worksheets are over, think again.
Worksheets are a great way for students to review concepts they may have forgotten or are just rusty on.
The strong point about math worksheets is what some educators don't like about them. They're focused. They don't require the student to think beyond actually solving the problem at hand.
Math worksheets are not a "think outside the box" strategy for teachers. Worksheets are very much in the box. Which can be useful in certain situations.
Take this article I read recently in the online version of the Cincinnati Enquirer. (Click here, to see the article.)
The student in the article had an infection of the brain and spinal column. When he recovered, he didn't remember third grade math. (He's a rising fourth grader.) He went to summer school in order to repair his math knowledge before entering fourth grade.
How did his teacher approach teaching this kid stuff he knew at one point?
Worksheets!
Worksheets helped this student focus on what he needed to re-learn. They also gave the teacher a very measurable method to keep up with the kid's progress.
Worksheets--they're not a relic from the past.
When used properly, they can be an indispensable teaching tool.
Here's the link to the article.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
Worksheets are a great way for students to review concepts they may have forgotten or are just rusty on.
The strong point about math worksheets is what some educators don't like about them. They're focused. They don't require the student to think beyond actually solving the problem at hand.
Math worksheets are not a "think outside the box" strategy for teachers. Worksheets are very much in the box. Which can be useful in certain situations.
Take this article I read recently in the online version of the Cincinnati Enquirer. (Click here, to see the article.)
The student in the article had an infection of the brain and spinal column. When he recovered, he didn't remember third grade math. (He's a rising fourth grader.) He went to summer school in order to repair his math knowledge before entering fourth grade.
How did his teacher approach teaching this kid stuff he knew at one point?
Worksheets!
Worksheets helped this student focus on what he needed to re-learn. They also gave the teacher a very measurable method to keep up with the kid's progress.
Worksheets--they're not a relic from the past.
When used properly, they can be an indispensable teaching tool.
Here's the link to the article.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
How To Use Printable Math Worksheets As A Teaching Tool
Printable Math Worksheets are often abused. Some teachers use them to fill up time, instead of doing any real teaching.
If you've got a whole classroom of fifteen or so kids (or even thirty!) all hunched over their desks working through a series of worksheets, it looks like something is happening.
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not!
Printable math worksheets can be a real boost to a teacher's arsenal, but they shouldn't be the only method a teacher uses. They shouldn't even be the primary method.
Let me tell you some good ways to use printable math worksheets in your classroom.
One great way to use them is to make them relevant to the child's interests.
Kids often find math in general irrelevant to their lives.
A math worksheet that revolves around something the child is interested in can catch that student's attention.
Let's suppose you have a child who is really interested in art. A worksheet designed around art, say figuring out how much wood you would need to build a picture frame, might be much more interesting to that child than a worksheet without a theme.
I read an article recently in The Columbian, a paper from Washington state.
In this article, which you can access by clicking on any of the links provided, there's a student who is not really interested in doing math. The reporter notices that she's just doodling.
She's trying, though. If you'll notice later in the article she says that math might be useful for her to understand prices of the artwork she hopes to sell when she grows up.
How could a teacher exploit this child's interest in art to help her with her math? By making the math worksheet relevant to her interests.
Instead of just multiplying numbers, for instance, the teacher could set up the math worksheet as a series of problems where you find the area of a canvas or a wall that you're about to paint. Now that the student is not just doing rote arithmetic, but figuring out something meaningful to her, you might be able to get and keep her attention.
This student is also interested in zookeeping. Yet another world of interests easily funneled into math problems.
Worksheets are sometimes viewed as non-creative substitutes for more complex problems. Used correctly, a properly written math worksheet that actually addresses a child's interests can have much more of an impact.
The only problem is finding the worksheets in the first place.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
If you've got a whole classroom of fifteen or so kids (or even thirty!) all hunched over their desks working through a series of worksheets, it looks like something is happening.
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's not!
Printable math worksheets can be a real boost to a teacher's arsenal, but they shouldn't be the only method a teacher uses. They shouldn't even be the primary method.
Let me tell you some good ways to use printable math worksheets in your classroom.
One great way to use them is to make them relevant to the child's interests.
Kids often find math in general irrelevant to their lives.
A math worksheet that revolves around something the child is interested in can catch that student's attention.
Let's suppose you have a child who is really interested in art. A worksheet designed around art, say figuring out how much wood you would need to build a picture frame, might be much more interesting to that child than a worksheet without a theme.
I read an article recently in The Columbian, a paper from Washington state.
In this article, which you can access by clicking on any of the links provided, there's a student who is not really interested in doing math. The reporter notices that she's just doodling.
She's trying, though. If you'll notice later in the article she says that math might be useful for her to understand prices of the artwork she hopes to sell when she grows up.
How could a teacher exploit this child's interest in art to help her with her math? By making the math worksheet relevant to her interests.
Instead of just multiplying numbers, for instance, the teacher could set up the math worksheet as a series of problems where you find the area of a canvas or a wall that you're about to paint. Now that the student is not just doing rote arithmetic, but figuring out something meaningful to her, you might be able to get and keep her attention.
This student is also interested in zookeeping. Yet another world of interests easily funneled into math problems.
Worksheets are sometimes viewed as non-creative substitutes for more complex problems. Used correctly, a properly written math worksheet that actually addresses a child's interests can have much more of an impact.
The only problem is finding the worksheets in the first place.
There are a number of sites on the Net where you can download math worksheets.
Also, here's a subscription based website that gives you access to not only more worksheets than you could ever use, but a lot of other teaching tools.
Just click here to access it.
I'd love to know about your experiences with math worksheets. Just let me know.
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