Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School I'm concerned that DD's teacher can't math

It's all I can do to keep my mouth shut and let the year play out a bit - which I know is what I need to do, because DD has always had a better year than Parent Orientation alone would lead me to believe.

This is the first year that 4th graders have one teacher for the whole day; previously, they've had one for Language Arts and one for Math, with Science and Social Studies assigned to whichever teacher liked that subject better. The change is district-wide, so everyone is stuck with it, like it or not. DD's teacher is new to the district, and previously taught in a state where 4th grade was the year for high-stakes standardized testing in writing, so she's used to spending an entire year cramming writing technique into the kids. In our state, that year is 5th grade, so I really hope DD does not get 2 years in a row of writing-test cram.

Why do I think she can't math? The extra-credit scheme, as described in the written handout, doesn't work - if she does what she says she does, extra-credit can lower your grade. She also has math-proficient kids, in order to get something more interesting to do, do a Powerpoint presentation and oral report to the class as a way of demonstrating their proficiency. (My DD is not math-proficient in advance of being taught the material, and it's not clear to me whether she can say "OK, I've learned it now, let me move on." But I can guarantee you she'd rather write passive-aggressive complaints on her math worksheets than stand up in front of the class and explain long division.)

I think she can't science, either. She does open-book science tests, because even after the kids are taught the material in class and given a teacher-provided study guide to prep for tests, "elementary science textbooks are just too hard for kids to understand."

Also, one of the other district-wide changes is the elimination of the pretest against end-of-year proficiency targets. Which is good, because it's 3 or 4 days of testing on material that most of the kids have never even seen before. OTOH, it means DD has no obvious opportunity to demonstrate to her teacher how much of the material she already knows, which IME makes a big difference in how the teacher treats you. There are myriad bad behaviors that can be ascribed either to "bored smart kid" or "troublemaker," and the first kid gets a heck of a lot more slack than the second. Particularly when the kid in question is writing passive-aggressive complaints on her papers, rather than answering the problems.

I got the same thing from my DS11's teacher last year in 5th grade. "The text book is so HARD so I don't use it. They don't get it from the book. We do tons of hands on stuff and they get that."

But then at least 4 times (which is 3 times too many IMO) he studied for a test and got to school and the test wasn't on what he thought it was going to be on. I had several parent conferences saying...can't you send home the text book and have him write in his planner "the test on Friday will cover pages 50-65?" Because if he tells us the test is on forces and motion and he studies that and he gets to school and the test is on simple machines, well what are we supposed to do? And we can't go over the hands on stuff they did in class with him because we weren't there.

Then the tests were in the format of the high stakes science test that they were to take at the end of the school year and they were hard and not necessarily anything that you could look up and find the correct answer in the text book (sometimes she would send the D test papers home and say if you correct it she would raise the grade and I had to help him even with him looking it up in the textbook). That class was just one big mess. His lowest scores ever were given in that class and it was frustrating because it wasn't from his lack of trying or ability.

So I feel your pain and good luck. Hopefully this year will be better for him in science.

On the plus side, she seems to be an excellent teacher for language arts. DD had a trivial spelling list last week (she knew 14 of 15 words already), but this week she had a list with no previously-known words, about half of which she was unable to define, either. Apparently, she and another girl got their own list this week, plus a second, harder, pretest to determine which words they'll get in the future.

She clearly is not a math teacher, though - the extra credit assignments are all book reports, and you get to choose to which subject (including math!) you apply the extra points. DD seems to be happy enough with the way math is being handled, though. There's not much emphasis on timed drills, which DD hates.

Glad there's an upside! I wouldn't worry too much about what she does with the credit system; let it be a lesson to Alex that such systems are often silly and to be ignored... If a non-mathy teacher simply avoids teaching maths, this is surely better than teaching it so badly that it puts everyone off; I'm sure you can arrange that Alex continues to learn maths anyway!

A lot of the textbooks are horrible, too.

The timed drills are critical for later success in math and the other quantitative classes up through calculus. You have to have the answers to trivial things immediately so you can focus on the hard parts. Its like dribbling in basketball. It has to be second nature. The secondary aspect of timed drills is learning to focus while under stress.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one. I had to count on my fingers and/or add-on for a handful of addition / subtraction / multiplication facts until I was out of college, and did fine through Calc 2. But the only things I considered to be "hard parts" were trig functions; the rest of math all made sense.

I personally found that as math got more advanced and complex, the ability to understand the underlying logic of the problem gave more of a speed advantage than being able to quickly recall facts.

I'm with you, math made and still makes far more sense to me when presented in a far more complex manner, or advance level where basic maths just were never my thing. I do think that some drill is important in the earlier years to set up a foundation, but it is harped on for so long that some minds just shut off and wander to other things and then render the drill useless.

Alex'smom - one advantage to doing the extra projects is honing skills that will be used in the future, advance in usage of the programs you stated, ( ie power point etc ), and really get a comfortability presenting information in front of people which will be soooo valuable in your childs future.

I don't disagree there. DD knows her facts better and faster than I did at that age, so I don't worry that her recall will hold her back in math. But she's a slow writer and tenses her arm muscles when she tries to write fast, and then her arm hurts. Failing over and over to meet the time cutoff means she stops trying, and concludes either that she's bad at math, or that she dislikes math, neither of which are actually true. She's just bad at (and dislikes) timed drill.

Fortunately, this year's teacher is using a 7-minute cutoff for the occasional subtraction and multiplication drill, and both of those should be achievable with practice. Addition is still 5 minutes, and last year she couldn't write that many digits in 5 minutes, even with no computation involved.

I personally see no value in knowing how to use Powerpoint. Or how to make a brochure in Publisher. Excel, now, there's something worth teaching.

But to require a Powerpoint and oral report to demonstrate math proficiency is sort of like saying "Your kid can have harder books just as soon as she's able to play Mary Had a Little Lamb on the violin." It's all well and good to be able to play an instrument, but it's got nothing directly to do with reading ability, no more than public speaking has to do with math.