Free voluntary (math) homework

I engaged in an act of (semi) academic dishonesty again last night.  It was a case of more of the "busy work" type math homework that resulted in repetitive plotting of co-ordinates on an x-y plane and then only on the positive parts of the plane in order to end up with a snoopy dog that then could be coloured. I'm not a cut and paste and colour type of mother. I also hate board games, Monopoly being my worst, so I don't play them (and it turns out I'm right about that type of board games - great graphic by the way). So after my child had done the first 50 or so of the points, I told him to go and have a shower and get to bed to read his FVR (free voluntary reading) book. And I finished off the last 10 points and coloured it in.

I then tipped out the schoolbag and its assorted jumble of loose bits of paper. Yes ditch the textbook(s) (great blog by the way) but the result is a godawful bunch of loose bits of paper torn and tattered at the bottom of a schoolbag - if they make their way home at all ever. Scratching through my archeological dig of the last 2 weeks since term commenced yielded two interesting pieces.  The first was a reflection on a test.  The question "How could you have performed better?"  The answer "Make less careless mistakes and reduce stress as I was stressed out" (sic).  The response: "less" corrected to "fewer" and "you should refer to the work you did not your feelings"

Ah, learning and stress. Despite what the rats did or didn't do in their maze, I can attest for the fact that when it comes to mathematics and stress, a certain young human in my life tends to shut down all cortical matter in order to be able to just breathe. So yes, his observation was right on the point, and the teacher was either naive or misguided or both. Small moment of positive affirmation that stress did not enhance the output during a test and that we needed to work on the emotional control as much as the preparation of the work to be assessed.

Next piece of paper, a "check-up" on co-ordinate planes. Except for the first quadrant, things didn't bode well for the understanding, particularly when it progressed to manipulating co-ordinates (i.e. plot a triangle and then move it 5 spaces on the y axis and -3 spaces on the x axis type of thing).  Why the freakingflowers were we drawing snoopy for 30 minutes when there was more interesting stuff at stake?

All this detail goes to my thought now on math homework. Actually it's thought that's long time coming starting when a certain child was failing miserably in a Chinese school and we had all this homework to do that kept us incredibly busy but never got us one step closer to helping him learn what he needed to learn to be able to participate at all. I think the academic term is "self paced learning"  but I wouldn't go so far, since I don't think that's really necessary anymore. And the self-paced thing is more geared to adult learning anyway.

I'd advocate for FV(M)H (free voluntary (math) homework). Within the context of a certain topic or module, there should be the option to do homework (or not) according to your needs and difficulties, rather than whatever has been set.  We are on one end of the continuum on math, and I know enough kids on the other end of the continuum.  But math is a wonderful thing that way - within any topic there is a huge variation and potential of what someone could spend 30 minutes working on!  (By the way, has anyone been following this discussion - it's absolutely wonderful - the comments being as excellent as the post itself). So this evening that is what we did.  We actually took 2 steps back, since before co-ordinates was substitution, and substitution was still a rather confused mess.  We spent more than 30 minutes on it, and I wrote a note to that effect. I hope it will be positively received...
Small steps.  I'm wondering how far one can take ownership and control over learning in the school setting despite all the talk of differentiation etc. before the system feels threatened gets mad at you.

I'm still thinking a partnership is possible, that triangle of child, teacher and parent/tutor. My husband did say - "Isn't that what Kahn academy is for", but I think not. Kahn can help once you know what you don't know. There is a meta-cognitive step necessary, a diagnosis, either through self-insight or observation. Who assumes that role?

Getting into and through Algebra

Whoever decided that learning should be "fun" ought to be hung.  Ok, I don't really mean that. Except when I do.  There are two occasions when I do mean that. One is around math and one is around spelling.

Let's slay spelling first - who the heck decided that the best way for a kid to learn how to spell was to make them write the words out using different colours and different twirly writing and writing it diagonally and vertically and do all sorts of silly games and things to fill in?  All the way through primary my son had to endure this.  He never minded writing a word 10 or 20 or 100 times. He did mind taking out the coloured pencils and f***ing around doing silly stuff.  And is there any evidence that it works at all?  I sincerely doubt it, and I'd be darned if there is any credible research behind this.  I'm with Sugata Mitra on this. Yes I do think it is preferable to spell correctly and I do despair of one of my children's inability to spell, but in the scheme of things I just don't think it's a deal breaker.  Especially not if it involves hours of meaningless crappy worksheets at the cost of other learning.  And anyway, everytime he spells something incorrectly in his Instagram it's an opportunity for the smart kids to engage with him and tell him he's done it wrong and correct it!

On to Algebra.  Now my views there are different. I do think algebra is important.  I just had a tough act selling it to a child who came home on Monday practically in tears because he didn't have a clue what had been going on in class that day and the minute I started talking "X" and "Y" had a minor fit. So, when in doubt, google it.  There is a lot of rubbish out there on math and algebra.  But I did find a rather nice YouTube video which explained very nicely why algebra was important, and it aligned exactly with my views (which I didn't know I had - i.e. I knew it was important but was incapable of expressing why properly and in the language that would relate to him).

So it's now Thursday, and I'm happy to report that with the help of the nice big white board, tons of patiences and forbearance on my part and a burning desire to succeed on his, we have progressed remarkably far.  He gets why and he gets that it's just a language and that it's particularly good for lazy people who don't want to write everything out as it makes things as simple as possible with as few letters as possible.  We've done lots of examples of pattern recognition, and converting the expression of simple patterns into equations.  We've also managed to get to the understanding that it's a useful way of generalising an expression so that we can then work anything in a sequence out by applying that expression.  That's a lot of progress in 4 days.  (Just an aside - the optimal moment for working on this is after he's spent an hour running or doing Crossfit!  Yay for exercise).

So today we get the first formal bit of school homework.  OMG the English Teachers have been

talking to the Math teachers!  Don't do it!  It's two worksheets with a bunch of equations embedded in a picture and you solve the equations and then colour the shapes in to see the picture. Now I can tell you right off the bat that he is not going to do that homework. Not because he doesn't want to, but because he HATES this type of homework.  So I make a deal with him.  I'll write out all the equations, he works them out and I'll do the colouring in (yes sweet saints, what the hell am I doing?). We do the first one, he finishes in a flash, and whereas he'd begun by saying he'd do the second one over the weekend, asks me to do the same for the 2nd and tackles it with gusto.  While he does it we have a little discussion over the fact that c+c = 2c = c(squared).   I the sucker, spend a little longer on the colouring but it gets done.

I mean what's the alternative. Being "that" mum and writing to the teacher asking to refrain from this insanity? I'm "that mum" enough I think.   The teacher probably thinks it's "fun" - for the girls maybe.  I just don't get the point.  More meaningful would be a page of equations and them picking out the ones that are equivalent expressions. Or just pages of equations. Or anything.