-=> Quoting Sheila King to William Lipp <=-
 WL> I just got a phone call last night from a fellow parent of math-
 WL> bright fifth graders.  We're apparently into the flip side of this
 WL> problem.  That child was in tears over the problem that math was too
 WL> boring.  All they were doing was repeating the stuff they had already
 WL> done in previous grades.  When he asked for more challenging work he
 WL> was given another of series of
 SK> ...
 SK> I don't know what else to say in response to your problem, than to
 SK> comiserate. I've had some similar experiences myself.
 SK> It does make me entertain the notion of the multi-age classroom,
 SK> however.
  All classes in this school are multi-grade.  He's in a
5-6 classroom, but this year's teaching team has the kids tracked by
grades instead of skill.  We use a system with strong head teachers that
stay on and less skilled assistant teachers that train 2-3 years and
move on.  The assistant is new this year and teaching fifth grade math.
Somehow it's become an attack on her to say the kids are bored.
 WL> We have a parent conference coming this week.  Maybe I
 WL> can get my tactful wife to lead the discussion about sufficiently
 WL> challenging math.
 SK> Well, I'm replying to this message over a month late. How did it go?
 SK> Do you manage to get anything resolved?
No real progress at the meeting.  "Kids say 'bored' for lots of reasons
that aren't really bored."  I pulled back out of sight for a while.
Eventually some of the best math kids were started in some geometry
additional work.  They seem to enjoy it, but I still think the teachers
missed a "teachable moment."  The kids were asking questions best answered
with algebra, and the sixth graders are studying algebra concepts.
I ran into one of those brick walls of "not age appropriate" this week.
We weren't getting back for Jan 2-3 classes, so he got math homework that
included multiplying decimals.  He was interested, so I tried to explain
why the rule "the product has as many decimal places as the multiplicands
combined" works.  We worked through examples based on dividing the sides
of a square, and looking at the number of rectangles that made;  he could
follow each step of the logic sequence, but it didn't click how it fit
together to explain the rule.  We both gave up and settled for learning
"what" instead of "why."
 They were studying associative and commutative properties
earlier this year.  Next time I'll try explaining it as factors of
(10 x 0.1) regrouped.  I think he'll grasp that.
--- Maximus/2 3.01
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