Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The Ultimate Bad Homework Question Thread!

So, okay, I read a bit of background here, and I now understand the question less than I did originally, when I knew nothing of the Year without a Summer (1816) and Lake Geneva and telling scary stories while futilely hoping the rain might stop sometime before 1817.

Clearly, "for Lord Byron" does not refer to a homework assignment that Byron convinced Mary Shelley to do for him.

It was Byron's idea to have a creepy story writing competition. It seems unlikely that Shelley would have gone to all the trouble of writing a novel, and then credit it to Byron so that he could win the competition with her story. Besides, he wrote his own creepy story.

If she hated him, perhaps she wrote the novel as a strange way of expressing her feelings for Lord Byron.

Exactly. DD knows a lot about Byron, and also about the sort of weird triangle between Mary, her husband, and the aforementioned "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know" king of epic romantic British poetry.

This is a True/False question from hell.

So maybe phrasing it as "yes, true-- because they were Frenemies." I mean, if she were truly writing it "for" him even in an inspirational sense, then I'm pretty sure that we're now venturing waist-deep (at least) into a kind of dark erotic playground (after all, Percy Shelley was also not exactly tangentially involved in that summer in Geneva) that has very little place in conventional high school English instruction. Though, come to think of it, maybe my DD was thinking of it correctly in placing that in a sort of Black-quadrant, Homestuck kind of framework. I digress.



And Byron was a lot of things, but Plagiarist doesn't seem to top the list.

LOL.

You win a major award, Val--

I just can't figure out which emoticon is most appropriate for a discussion which includes ANYTHING about Byron.

High school class (career exploration, a graduation requirement) asks:

How do you want to live?


DD's every-snarky answer....

Like Charlie Sheen, I think.

'Atta girl.

She clarifies... You know I'm joking, right? I don't think that I have the STAMINA to pound drugs and alcohol like that... and I think it would be off-putting for the kinds of friends I'd like to have...

What was the answer to the Byron question? Even having done a bit of reading, I still don't know.

I mean, it was true in the sense that it was his idea to have a writing competition.

But it was false in that she didn't write it FOR him.

I'll PM you (it is technically a test question)...

Sounds familiar. My senior class received a short survey from the yearbook team, so our answers could be included with our yearbook pictures. One of the fields was for "Accomplishments." I'd won an award or three, had a significant role in the musical, etc., but I really didn't think that I wanted to be remembered as an obnoxious braggart by my classmates many years hence.

So... I have lived an empty life.

Months later, when yearbooks were sold, I received a lot of congratulations on this accomplishment.

I haven't posted in a while, just lurking occasionally, but was thrilled to see this thread so have to post!

DS's spelling tests now include not only spelling the word correctly but also placing it in the "appropriate" category. This week's categories were "People who do things" and "Words used to compare". One of the spelling words was "stranger". Which category does this fall in?

Well, according to the review sheet, the "correct" category is "people who do things"! This led to a most ridiculous discussion with ds about what exactly a stranger does. Clearly, in this situation "words used to compare" is the correct categorization. But no.

I really hate being put in the position of saying to him, yes clearly the answer they expect from you is wrong but if you answer the correct answer they will mark it as wrong. But it also seems kind of a petty thing to call up the teacher about. Sigh. Thanks for creating a thread that let's me vent about these things!

So... uh.... a "stranger" is a person who... lurks or poses a danger to others? Provokes fear?

Just trying to come up with some activities for the person to "do" things.

Just goes to show you that correct answers are frequently stranger than incorrect ones. Relatively speaking.

These are priceless.



DS's fourth grade math class is studying what I'd normally consider to be third or even second-grade material. Problem after problem stresses single-digit multiplication, with the children sometimes forced to draw a picture to "help" them arrive at the right answer. It seems to actually be demeaning for DS7. We asked for DS to take the end of fourth grade test, and the school agreed but is taking a while to grade the test now, likely because DS did well.

Anyway, for the end of section math test last week, I was careful to tell DS not to let his mind wander and to check every answer. He reported that he got all the answers right. Lo and behold, the test came home, and he'd been docked two points for giving a "wrong" answer. The word problem (one of the real toughies on the test) stated that a person could bike a mile in 4 minutes, and asked how many minutes it would take the person to bike 5 miles. DS answered "20", and got marked wrong.

Fool that I am, I decided to politely mention it to the teacher. I wanted to forestall a situation where DS is happily reported by someone at a meeting still to have some math to learn in that down-level class. I explained by email that there's a difference between calling for the unit in the answer and calling for just a number; that here he would have technically been wrong to include the unit in the answer, since "20 minutes minutes" is not a valid duration; and that a problem calling for units in the answer should leave it out in the question, instead asking "how long" or something similar.

The teacher replied that he had been marked wrong because he got the problem wrong, and that they were teaching children to include units in their answer all the time so they wouldn't ever forget them.

I responded that that was a faulty approach that would confuse at least some of the children someday, especially when they began dealing with combined units such as meters per second squared and the like in science classes. I told her it would be better to teach the students to recognize when it was correct to include the units in the answer, and when not, so that they'd actually understand why units are necessary and would learn to think about what unit was appropriate, instead of having it fed to them all the time. I ended by saying that I'd be happy enough if DS were given credit for all his right answers on his end of year test, and that we could follow up then. :|

I felt so much like "that parent", but I'd had enough. I told DS to always be careful to get the right answer, and not to ever change his answer when a teacher at his school told him differently. I finally told him that the way they approach math learning at his school and in the district is deeply flawed, though he's not to repeat that to anyone there, and that I'm doing my best to solve that problem for him. I also told him to refuse to do addition/subtraction math drills if his third grade teacher gives him any more (which also happened recently), and tell her to contact me. Had it!

If you are asked to list accomplishments and do so, a reasonable person would not call you a braggart. A braggart supplies such information without prompting.