Child Underperforms Because Tested Above Cognitive Level

[Chenonceau]

http://i39.tinypic.com/saw1eq.jpg\">

Today's newspapers published an article about 2 PRC students who set up a website where contributors give free online lectures for JC students.

http://i44.tinypic.com/2sac6qx.jpg\">
They did it to help students too poor to pay for tuition and enrichment.


(1) Clearly, such online resource sharing is not at all difficult to set up. Why accept from MOE a mere booklist identified by individual Teachers as suggested by wonderm and ksi?

(2) These 2 PRC students share their knowledge for free with the whole world. MOE does not pay them. Why are our teachers so jealous of their resources? What's this about being unfair to teachers (something which worried Piggylalala) just because we ask them to share their worksheets, their models and their notes with other teachers across the nation's schools?

(3) Why believe that the best resources are those that are already published in Popular? In my personal experience, the most helpful resources are those that I have managed to get from friends in schools that DO write resources. NOT Popular assessment books. In my personal experience, the best resource for P5 and P6 Math for my son can only be bought online. Top school exams (written by Teachers) beat any Popular assessment book any day in being flexibly tailored to the requirements of the PSLE. I have spent hours poring over assessment books in Popular searching for resources. Of the plethora of resources in Popular, I have been able to find only 1 or at best 2 a year that I consider of a quality that is worth my son's foregone playtime.

The kind of resources that I use to power my son's crazy improvement from lousy to groovy CANNOT BE BOUGHT even with money. I have NO science assessments, NO English assessments, NO Chinese assessments.

Best resources are written by teachers for the students they teach (either in schools or in tuition centres) NOT by some money-making publisher who just wants to push out a book. Indeed, a friend of mine was tasked to write and she assures me that the publishers don't really know (nor check) whether what you write is absolute junk. It just has to look ok enough to fool the average parent.

At present, there already exists excellent resources within the school system, hidden inside schools. To marshall these resources, the following is possible...

(1) Run yearly competitions for highest quality resources
(2) Allow any Teacher to upload resources for sharing with teachers in other schools.
(3) Check the clickthrough rate for each Teacher's upload and reward the Teacher with a writing bonus (and maybe one day, our children will be able to access videos made by their teachers to teach them and help them revise)

It's not more difficult than setting up a KSP forum, and it'll
(1) offload Teachers
(2) allow Teachers to quickly and easily respond to individual student needs (just access the database and pull out stuff)
(3) allow Teachers to see how others write good resources
(4) provide Teachers with pride in their work (especially if the community appreciates their uploads)
(5) provide free access to high quality educational resources to every child in the nation without lining the pockets of low quality publishers out to make a quick buck from the unsuspecting parent

Setting up a sharing database is not difficult at all.

Since I am asking for a level playing field for all students rich or poor, I might as well ask for the full works... instead of beg for scraps by asking for
(1) just a book list
(2) hopefully some private sector publisher will write a good textbook to make money

I am a Singaporean. I pay taxes and have been loyal to this country for years and years. I see no reason to accept that our MOE (which consumes milions a year in salaries) can deliver less than 2 PRC students. Unfortunately, the 2 PRC students share for JC level. We need a similar resource for primary level.

[corneyAmber]

Chenon, I have to disagree here that there is a difference. System implementation is one of my forte and when implemented in an organisation, it has more components than you can imagine unlike what these 2 kids have done.


Nobody will criticise the 2 kids if anything goes wrong as they started as a volunteer service but everyone will charge at MOE if it is implemented wrongly because everyone EXPECTS MOE to know-how and to do it flawlessly. That said, it is something they still can do but it takes more planning and time. For the boys, if they fail, no harm done and the scale of their project is small compared to what MOE needs to venture into. even as a pilot run, they need to do a RFI first. So it is not a fair comparison.

[Chenonceau]

ksi:

Chenon, I have to disagree here that there is a difference. System implementation is one of my forte and when implemented in an organisation, it has more components than you can imagine unlike what these 2 kids have done.


Nobody will criticise the 2 kids if anything goes wrong as they started as a volunteer service but everyone will charge at MOE if it is implemented wrongly because everyone EXPECTS MOE to know-how and to do it flawlessly. That said, it is something they still can do but it takes more planning and time. For the boys, if they fail, no harm done and the scale of their project is small compared to what MOE needs to venture into. So it is not a fair comparison.

There may be a difference. It may be more challenging for MOE but it is not something beyond MOE's resources and ability. Of course it takes planning and time, but it is not impossible. No comparison is entirely fair. The point is that it is eminently doable.

I don't understand that we wanna mollycoddle MOE and indulge it in it's delusions of what it has done and is capable of. It sure doesn't mollycoddle our kids.

I don't think we should underestimate the scale of what the boys have done. They have a product. It is free. It is in demand. Facebook started in one university as a small scale something with USD2000...

[corneyAmber]

Chenonceau:

ksi:

Chenon, I have to disagree here that there is a difference. System implementation is one of my forte and when implemented in an organisation, it has more components than you can imagine unlike what these 2 kids have done.


Nobody will criticise the 2 kids if anything goes wrong as they started as a volunteer service but everyone will charge at MOE if it is implemented wrongly because everyone EXPECTS MOE to know-how and to do it flawlessly. That said, it is something they still can do but it takes more planning and time. For the boys, if they fail, no harm done and the scale of their project is small compared to what MOE needs to venture into. So it is not a fair comparison.

There may be a difference. It may be more challenging but it is not something beyond MOE's resources and ability. Of course it takes planning and time, but it is not impossible. No comparison is entirely fair. The point is that it is eminently doable.

That I agree it is doable...just not immediately. If the need is so strong and painful now, there has to be an interim solution first.

[Chenonceau]

ksi:

Chenonceau:

[quote=\"ksi\"]Chenon, I have to disagree here that there is a difference. System implementation is one of my forte and when implemented in an organisation, it has more components than you can imagine unlike what these 2 kids have done.


Nobody will criticise the 2 kids if anything goes wrong as they started as a volunteer service but everyone will charge at MOE if it is implemented wrongly because everyone EXPECTS MOE to know-how and to do it flawlessly. That said, it is something they still can do but it takes more planning and time. For the boys, if they fail, no harm done and the scale of their project is small compared to what MOE needs to venture into. So it is not a fair comparison.

There may be a difference. It may be more challenging but it is not something beyond MOE's resources and ability. Of course it takes planning and time, but it is not impossible. No comparison is entirely fair. The point is that it is eminently doable.

That I agree it is doable...just not immediately. If the need is so strong and painful now, there has to be an interim solution first.[/quote]Yay! :rahrah: Then we agree. As long as we are talking about interim VS long-term. Actually, I was already quite sure that you had meant interim. I just wanted this point to be emphasized in this thread. Thanks for posting.

[Peggy Zee]

I believe that children should have a good foundation in math language and concepts in their preschool years. It is my mission to change how math is taught to our children between 3 and 12 (the specific of what math is, how children learn and how it should be taught.) Children often "under-perform" in maths because they are passive recipients of ready-made concepts. They are not guided to discover their own math understanding and acquire a personal "tool-kit" to deal with more complex problems. Children need to be given the opportunity to make math meaningful to themselves instead of learning by rote meaningless drills and activities. Peggy

[Laura02]

I agree with you, Peggy Zee. The concept sounds good. Perhaps you could suggest some concrete examples to teach Math concepts and principle that parents with pre-school kids can follow.

[Peggy Zee]

Well, good news. It’s not just a concept. It’s something I have been doing for the past thirty yeas - teaching teachers and parents how to help their children with maths. I shall try to share some basic ideas that parents can try with their children. To start with, children should be given lots of experiences speaking about numbers and developing their own number sense. Number sense can only be developed when children have many opportunities to interact in their daily life experiences when they guess, compare, estimate and find ways to confirm their guesses about quantity or size. Parents need to be ready to give their children loads of chances to make mistakes and discover their own learning - it is most vital (IMPORTANT) not to expect perfection from the very beginning but to allow for guesses, trial and error so that the child dares to learn. When we "teach" we often squash children’s instincts to learn and experiment.

The big ideas about early maths is being able to match, sort, group, classify and compare similarities / differences between objects and numbers of items. Symbols like + (plus) - (minus) = (equal) and even numerals like 5 (five) are abstract concepts that need to be tied to concert concepts to help children make the transition from hands-on learning experiences to abstract symbolic representation of that concrete experience. The failure of adults in helping children achieve this transition is often one recurrent problems. The next is the issue is the embedding children into rigid processes. Eg that when you see the symbol + (plus) you add and when you see the symbol - (minus) you deduct. That is not always the action to take. Therefore helping children understand the concept behind adding and subtracting and translating English language statements (problem sums) into math language (number sentences) is extremely important. Most importantly, giving children a chance to enjoy and love maths is still the key to good math performance.

[beanbear]

Great to see you contributing here Peggy. I was one of the parents who benefited from your parents’ workshop at my DD’s school and till today I still remember what you taught about part-whole concept. Now at P5, when problem sums become so embedded in complex diagrams and confusing language, it’s a constant struggle to help our children see how the problem is related to everyday concepts. The part-whole concept is critical and thankfully, it’s something I’m still able to use with my kids and help them deal with difficult problem sums.


Would you be able to conduct Parent workshops on how to bridge lower Primary maths into Upper Primary maths, especially to see the link between what’s done in the foundation years can affect the upper primary years. For eg, my DD struggled with multiplication in the early years and I can still see how she struggles still with understanding the concept of multiplication & division.

What are things we could do with older primary kids like P5? I’m always hopeful that it’s never too late to still brush up on foundation work but sometimes, feel quite lost other than doing more practices & drills.

[bebe]

beanbear:

Great to see you contributing here Peggy. I was one of the parents who benefited from your parents' workshop at my DD's school and till today I still remember what you taught about part-whole concept. Now at P5, when problem sums become so embedded in complex diagrams and confusing language, it's a constant struggle to help our children see how the problem is related to everyday concepts. The part-whole concept is critical and thankfully, it's something I'm still able to use with my kids and help them deal with difficult problem sums.


Would you be able to conduct Parent workshops on how to bridge lower Primary maths into Upper Primary maths, especially to see the link between what's done in the foundation years can affect the upper primary years. For eg, my DD struggled with multiplication in the early years and I can still see how she struggles still with understanding the concept of multiplication & division.

What are things we could do with older primary kids like P5? I'm always hopeful that it's never too late to still brush up on foundation work but sometimes, feel quite lost other than doing more practices & drills.

i am keen in the maths workshop if there is one. My dd1 is not strong in her maths..as in she takes a long time to grasp the concept...she can practise but time may not be on her side...I fear the day when she has to deal with fraction, % and ratio all in one word problem..dunno if she can pass PSLE maths..