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from the probably-where-I-went-wrong dept.
Educators, policymakers, and parents have begun to focus more on children's math learning in the earliest years. Yet parents and teachers still find it challenging to know which kinds of early math skills merit attention in the classroom. Determining how to help children achieve in math is important, particularly for children from low-income families who often enter school with weaker math knowledge than their peers. A new longitudinal study conducted in Tennessee has found that low-income children's math knowledge in preschool was related to their later achievement—but not all types of math knowledge were related equally. The findings suggest that educators and school administrators may want to consider carefully which areas of math study they shift attention to as they develop curricula for the early years.
Conducted by researchers at Vanderbilt University, the study appears in the journal Child Development.
The study followed 517 low-income children from ages 4 to 11; the children were primarily Black and all qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, a measure of poverty. When the children were in the last year of preschool and near the end of first grade, researchers tested general skills (including self-regulated behavior, work-related skills, and reading) and six math skills (patterning, counting objects, comparing quantities, understanding written numbers, calculating, and understanding shapes). When the children were at the end of fifth grade, researchers tested a range of math knowledge, including knowledge about numbers, algebra, and geometry. The aim of the study was to determine whether children's math skills at ages 4 and 5 predicted their math achievement at age 11.
Preschool math skills supported first-grade math skills, which in turn supported fifth-grade math knowledge, according to the study. In preschool, children's skills in patterning, comparing quantities, and counting objects were stronger predictors of their math achievement in fifth grade than other skills, the study found. By first grade, patterning remained important, and understanding written numbers and calculating emerged as important predictors of later achievement.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday December 07 2016, @08:21PM
My kids were at the leading edge of attending a public "STEM Academy" back when that was new and cool and people seem to be doing exactly the same thing but calling it "STEM" instead of "Montessori".
Just to be clear -- I don't know precisely what was involved in your "STEM academy," but Montessori is a very specific teaching method that involves a bunch of very specific materials (lots of physical activities with "manipulatives," etc.). They're often private and more expensive due to the cost in acquiring all these specialized materials. Ironically, when the founder of Montessori originally came up with this stuff, she made simple things out of stuff like wood, which was intended to be CHEAP back then. There's also a lot of very specific Montessori dogma regarding exactly how you introduce activities and concepts, how you lead children from one thing to another, the "proper" way to do every activity, etc.
I personally don't buy into the dogma that much, and while I think a lot of the physical materials for the activities have a sound pedagogical basis, I think a lot of schools and teachers who do this go overboard in fetishizing these teaching materials and methods as if they were the only way that works.
Nevertheless, if you're looking for a more individualized approach to primary pedagogy, the local Montessori school may be the only one available for a lot of people. If your kids had an opportunity to do similar things without all the Montessori dogma (whether at a "STEM academy" or just at a better public school), that's really cool. My son also ended up attending a public kindergarten which was NOT Montessori, but it was also a lot more individualized than my kindergarten experience, with various "learning stations" and activities that kids were given more freedom to explore.
Pessimistically I could predict that some of the wordiness of new style report cards is its harder to think teachers do nothing if whats produced to the parents is a short term paper rather than a letter and a nano-tweet like I got as a kid.
As someone who actually had to write those "progress reports" at the private high school I mention, I have to agree a bit. I ended up "padding" them a lot, frankly, just because it seemed to be expected. (And in this case, the parents were also paying a rather huge tuition too.) In most cases, a short paragraph would have been plenty to say how the student was doing in my class for that quarter, but it seemed like a more lengthy "letter" was the expectation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday December 07 2016, @09:14PM
but Montessori is a very specific teaching method
Oh right on right on, I agree with you in that area, I meant specifically WRT the style of the progress reports. Not necessarily the rest of the secret sauce. Although watching my kids and trying to remember back when I was a kid specifically WRT manipulatives they seem to be more "into that" in the 00s/early 10s than they were in the 70s. Its not like the world suffered a lack of poker chips or legos in the 70s but I don't remember using them as much as I saw my kids use them.
Possibly some kind of convergent evolution thing going on with report card format, given similar outlooks or training the format of report cards tends to converge no matter if "public STEM academy" or private Montessori.
Speaking of convergent evolution Kumon originally evolved to use cheap worksheets but the monthly rate for Kumon isn't that cheap. Perhaps the (tm) (c) (r) worksheets the franchises buy are not cheap.
You have a lot of interesting inside education information which is cool. My SiL and a cousin both work as school teachers but they never talk anything of substance just complain mostly, in fact they complain a lot, unfortunately.