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Lesson Plans


Re: q.e.d.

[ Thread ][ Subject ][ Author ][ Date ]
Sharon Heneborn (heneborn)
Tue, 23 Nov 1999 22:31:21 -0500

I taught a workshop to math teachers about integrating math and art
(or using art to teach math concepts.) I thought I would not need to
teach the math concepts. Needless to say the workshop did not go as I
had planned. Now I read the posts about the math teachers who teach
math teachers and dividing 7/4 by 1/2 and I understood that maybe it
wasn't me. Perhaps it is like my husband suggests that teachers are
trained to focus on reading and the math study is short changed. On
the other hand the the kind of students who go into teaching are
perhaps best at reading and therefore focus on that. I consider
myself short changed in math education and have taken further training
to try to catch up. It is like growing up skinny bird legs and even
after you finally gain weight you still think of yourself as bird
legs. I was told in school that I couldn't do math so I can't do
math!

I felt good to get the correct answer to the problem but I am still
struggling with the word problem. Would this work?

Sarah had a bowl of apples. She cut the apples into four parts
(quarters). She ate seven (7/4) quarters for lunch. If seven
quarters represented 1/2 of the pieces of apples how many apples did
Sarah cut?

Sarah got her allowance for the week. She took seven quarters to
school to buy lunch. She took 1/2 of her allowance to school. How
many quarters did Sarah have in her allowance and how many dollars did
this represent?

Sharon from NJ
--To respond to me directly click on heneborn

> Still, regardless and the comparison aside, it is disconcerting that only 9
> out of 23 *adults* (never mind that they were teachers, and math teachers at
> that) could solve a simple problem like 1-3/4 divided by 1/2, nor be able to
> come up with a sample problem to illustrate it. What we're talking about
> here is a basic lack of understanding, and it is pervasive.

>and in some cases changing, assessment and
> standards, but we are rarely changing the one thing which needs to be
> changed most drastically - teacher education.
>
> So the ongoing process is the same old Band-Aid and modify: we try to adapt
> As the author of the article, Linda Seebach, states, "And when people try to
> tell you there's no crisis in American education, you can tell them they're
> dreaming." Denial, rationalizations and excuses *to and for OURSELVES* will
> not save our children.
> Lar

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