A few days ago, my six-year-old grandson, who attends first grade in a public school in New York City, called to ask a question.
He said, “Ama, I am doing a data analysis. I need to ask you a question.”
I said, “You are doing a WHAT?” He repeated, “I am doing a data analysis.”
Then he asked whether I would rather be a porcupine or a hedgehog.
I thought a minute and said I would rather be a hedgehog.
He was very surprised. I knew he was doing something related to the Common Core, but I still thought he was a little young to get my mini-lecture about Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay about War and Peace.
He asked why I wanted to be a hedgehog, and I said that the hedgehog knows one big thing.
He asked me what the big thing was that I knew.
And I said that you should not be afraid to speak up when you were outnumbered.
It turns out that he was making a bar graph, plotting the number of people who preferred to be either a porcupine or a hedgehog.
I was not sure why he was learning this in first grade.
More on this from the following exchange.
Recently, Edward Miller and Nancy Carlsson-Paige wrote a critique of the K-3 sequence in the Common Core standards, saying they were completely inappropriate for these ages.
Then E.D. Hirsch Jr. responded to them.
Now Miller and Carlsson-Paige respond to Hirsch.
Would you rather be a porcupine or a hedgehog?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I found this on Yahoo! Answers, so I can’t speak for its veracity, but if it is true, I’d rather be a porcupine – they sound like critters that can stand up for themselves:
“Hedgehogs are insectivores and porcupines are rodents. Hedgehogs eat worms and insects on the ground and porcupines (in North America) eat tree bark and buds in the high branches and will chew up and destroy tools and things you touch with sweaty hands since they crave salt, and love to gnaw. They will chew the wires and hoses under the hood in your car, so beware. Hedgehogs are not found in America, and are just harmless. Porcupines will also swat animals (like your pet dog) in the face with their tails, if they get close to them, and the quills burrow themselves in. A vet will have to painfully pull those barbed quills out or they will keep working further ways inwards, the dog may get a bad infection from them and die. Porcupines won’t attack you but give them their space, to stay safe. They can also grow a good bit bigger than hedgehogs. Even bigger ones live in Africa.”
I would rather be a Mountain Bluebird. I wonder how that fits into the common core?
As far as the bar-graph exercise, when my daughter was four-nearly-five and in a combined pre-k/k class, they had a homework assignment to walk around the neighborhood (with a parent) and count cars of different colors and make a bar graph. My husband did that with our daughter and he said it was one of the better homework assignments he’d worked on with her. Once he showed her how to make the graph, she kind of had fun marking the next box for each appropriate color. As long as it’s presented well, I don’t think that particular exercise is out of reach of young children.
The very idea of homework at age 4 just does not sit well with me.
I agree completely with that, which is why she’s now in a progressive school that doesn’t give any, and her sister will avoid the pre-k/k class altogether.
I don’t know how you can be agnostic about the Common Core when this is what you get from it. I’ve never gotten the standards movement. I grew up in the suburbs in a relatively good school district, so I never understood the panic about how Johnny Can’t Read (since the Johnny in my class could read). And the standards movement always seemed motivated by the paranoid fear that even if Johnny could read, he was reading the wrong stuff — i.e., that the Western Canon was being overrun by multiculturalism. I like common cultural references as much as the next guy, but I just never understood the obsessive need to standardize and institutionalize them. And now that I see them in action all these years later, I don’t feel any better about them.
I teach students in special ed, between 8 and 11 years old, who all participate in NYS alternate assessment due to their cognitive functioning. The alternate assessment “datafolios” are not the best measure of their progress, but there are options to create tasks for the students that reflect the level of complexity they are able to master.
In addition to that, this year, here in NYC, we are also supposed to do the city-wide common core task – the dreaded” bundles.” The difference is that we must use the grade level standards. So students who function on a kindergarten level – or in some cases below- must write opinion pieces that cite details from informational text to back up their point and multiply and divide fractions with different denominators. We are allowed to “differentiate,” and “scaffold” and use “universal design for learning” – but I have yet to find a method to get kids who barely know the alphabet and numbers how to write an opinion piece or multiply fractions.
We are not allowed to use, for example, a kindergarten standard for an older special ed student who functions on that level – even though they have been exempted from grade level assessments and work due to the nature of their disabilities.
And even if we had the option to use the K-3 standards, they’re are not developmentally appropriate either….of course!
I love celebrating moments with my 8 or 10 year old kids who are able to write their name independently for the first time and sound out words. These “bundles” and the type of activities that qualify as” academic rigor” suck the joy right out of learning.
It’s got to stop.
Good luck — I taught Special Ed in the Bronx for a few years and the lack of understanding was phenomenal. I mean the lack of understanding on the part of administrators, even the ones who were somewhat supportive. “Their numbers count, too,” I was told on one of my first days on the job.
And how those numbers are arrived at! I remember at an earlier stage of the Standards Movement, when NY State decided to get rid of their two tier system at the HS level — Regents Exams for earning a State certified diploma and Regents Competency Tests to declare minimal competency — and replace it with a single test. At that point over 80% of NYC students used at least one of the tests to graduate. What was the plan? To come up with one test that was more rigorous and tougher than either of the two old tests.
So even though only 20% of students in NYC passed the old Regents Exams, now 100% -including, with few exceptions, special ed kids– need to pass a much tougher test.
Strangely enough they dumbed down the test. At that point they had not learned how to blame the people in the classroom for all the problems of the schools.
I’m not sure there’s any “lack of understanding”, at least any that’s not willful. This was posted on Fred Klonsky’s blog:
“If our entire rationale for school reform, as articulated by President Obama in his recent State of the Union speech, is economic competitiveness, where does class size for special ed students fit in? If they are not going to attend college and become scientists or technicians, we do not need to worry about them at all, based on this set of values. I am afraid the recent Simpsons cartoon may be prophetic. At the Ayn Rand preschool, the gifted students get art, music and books, while the rest are dumped in a “nothing special” classroom.
– Anthony Cody”
If you look at education purely in economic terms, what’s the point of special ed anyway?
The lack of understanding is phenomenal!
My first few years teaching I taught at a D75 school that served students with emotional disturbance and were “standardized assessment.” Many of them read and understood at grade levels 3 or 4 years below. I got all kinds of BS about bulletin board work – I remember once a “network leader” came in and criticized 5th graders artwork as “juvenile!”
Coaches and quality reviewers came in with suggestions, but none of them were anything a teacher hadn’t though of before – they’d say stuff like “use graphic organizers” or “make it fun.”
Meanwhile, the social / emotional needs of these students with emotionally disabilities went nearly unnoticed by the powers that be – though violence in the classroom was a several -times- daily occurrance.
In May or early June of 2009, the principal came in and announced that all my students passed the math test. I remember that day – there was a snow day that week and a huge brawl at breakfast. I proctored the exam – they didn’t pass. Turns out that was the year they lowered the passing grade so the DOE looked good. I guess that was the year they learned to blame the people in the classroom.
Dienne –
That’s a good point. Although I’m sure you, me and most of the readers and commenters on this blog would beg to differ.
But your comment got me wondering – if “they’re” looking at special ed in economic terms and “what’s the point?”…are ‘they” already looking for ways to make money off these kids? I had a terrible, but not fully formed thought about your Rupert Murdoch types starting to blame social workers or reopening institutions or something. The mind boggles.
This project has several benefits for six-year-olds (and thereabouts). First, children get early experiences in math where math is not just calculating THE correct answer to an equation. This open-endedness makes the problem very real and engaging. Students are interested in what the solution(s) will be. Second, these students will be SORTING their data (hedgehogs and porcupines), a valuable, higher-order skill for them, but accessible. Third, the bar graphs that the children make will be scaled and discussed so that they can add to their number sense and understand the relative value of numbers. Last, the hedgehog and porcupine were selected probably based on the teacher’s knowledge of the students’ interests, maybe because they recently studied these animals in a science lesson. Common core or not, this student task appears to be one of important, deep, and engaging (fun) learning for these young students.
If you have read any Piaget, many of those concepts are not appropriate for a six year old. Bar graphs are symbolic which is not where six year olds are in there number sense or understandings. We can probably teach them algebra too by why would we and why does a six year old need to read a bar graph? How is that applicable to their concerns at 6 or what they do day to day? They are six. This idea that pushing the curriculum down is better is garbage. It only makes more kids look like failures when in reality they shouldn’t even be concerned with bar graphs and analyzing data. Start flash carding in utero folks because they will be tested upon arrival. Childhood is so passé.
What should we do with students that thrive on advanced work?
Some students can indeed thrive on advanced work – but that doesn’t mean we should throw advanced work at them all. My younger is particularly adept at math (and now the CCSS means she won’t have any opportunity to accelerate for 2 more years in our school system! :-() and still in 2nd grade her class spent THREE LONG WEEKS doing bar graphs, both daily in school and in homework (which was taking her nearly an hour a day for those 3 weeks). If children need 3 weeks to “get” that kind of concept, they aren’t READY for it. It’s more abstract and representative and at that age the concrete is still being processed and worked out by most children.
To me that is one of the major downsides of CCSS: the idea that we can standardize children, that they *will* all come to us above average and they *will* all learn above grade level, simply because the policymakers and the curriculum designers will it to be so. It leaves the brighter kids bored and the slower kids behind, and the utter inappropriateness of the work now being pushed on the K-3 set at large is depressing. Definitely work out a plan for the kids who ARE ready for more advanced work – but DO NOT assume that all kids are because some are.
What do we do with the ones that can go faster? I have a friend who’s son is growing increasingly frustrated with his fourth grade math instruction. They have hired a math teacher to enrich his instruction privately, but there is a worry about poaching the fifth grade curriculum and making the problem worse. The solution for my son was to have him go from fifth to seventh grade and he had to leave his public high school in order to get an appropriate math and science education.
@TE: As long as there is Common Core and the insistence that all students learn at the same (often unrealistic pace, whether too fast or too slow), there will be kids who are bored to tears. I have two. My 5th-grader was saved from having to be bused to middle school for first period math before a full day of 5th grade by enough other kids ahead in math – CCSS won’t make it to 5th grade in our school till next year so she dodged that bullet – and my 2nd-grader is bored to tears without a chance to accelerate till 4th grade, as CCSS has made it to 3rd grade so far.
Before the CCSS, both my kids WOULD have had the chance to move ahead. Theoretically, there is opportunity for differentiation built in, some “challenge” work that brighter kids might be able to do independently, but my 2nd-grader is in a class of 27 with a wide disparity in both reading and math and the expectation that kids will be tested regularly (quarterly) in both, so there is really only so much else the teacher can do in the time that remains for TEACHING. 😦
Realistic class sizes would be a huge help for teachers, especially those with a wide disparity between the highest- and lowest-performing students, so as to allow for true differentiation in the time allowed; FAR FAR fewer weeks spent testing would also allow more opportunities to enrich or accelerate the curriculum for kids moving ahead, as would even additional part-time staff to work with those kids.
But as long as our financial resources and time and personnel are being increasingly spent on evaluations, I don’t see much more opportunity for real meaningful differentiation. 😦
My son was in school before the common core and the only available solution was to skip grades and take courses outside of the local public school system when he was in high school.
Then I would argue that your school did a poor job differentiating for your son. That doesn’t equate to CCSS being either good or bad. I homeschooled for 2 years because the schools weren’t meeting my older daughter’s needs; some stronger teachers moved in, a MUCH stronger principal took the reins, and it *is* now working for her and working well by and large, except for the huge time-suck that is the testing prep and administration mandated from outside the school itself.
But now that CCSS has been established in the earlier grades, I can say with confidence that it is NOT meeting my younger child’s needs any more, and we may soon have to make a decision about pulling her from a language immersion ES program that she does enjoy to get her away from the stultifying math and reading curricula in which non-fiction reading now takes most of the place of what used to be science and social studies. 😦
It seems to me that the staffing of your local school is at least as important as the existence of the CCSS. You have no hope that the new strong teachers and principle can find a way to implement the standards that help?
To the teachingeconomist,
You asked about principals and teachers doing a work-around. That is the best immediate stop-gap response.
However, the problem is that this is obviously coming from the highest levels of nearly all states at this point. And evasion of compliance with the standards is now being treated as insubordination. Just note how the language is laden with notions that treat the Common Core as inviolable dictates, etched in stone.
That the Common Core got sneaked in, by creators with no understanding for developmentally appropriate education demonstrates the pitfalls of educational policy being set with no input from the public, where parents and teachers can have input.
Teachers now must mobilize against this.
This project has several benefits for six-year-olds (and thereabouts). First, children get early experiences in math where math is not just calculating THE correct answer to an equation. This open-endedness makes the problem very real and engaging. Students are interested in what the solution(s) will be. Second, these students will be SORTING their data (hedgehogs and porcupines), a valuable, higher-order skill for them, but accessible. Third, the bar graphs that the children make will be scaled and discussed so that they can add to their number sense and understand the relative value of numbers. Last, the hedgehog and porcupine were selected probably based on the teacher’s knowledge of the students’ interests, maybe because they recently studied these animals in a science lesson. Common core or not, this student task appears to be one of important, deep, and engaging (fun) learning for these young students.
My daughter, also six years old, also at a school that works to follow the Common Core, does surveys all the time. I don’t have any problems with it, in fact I think it is one of the charming things they do. The idea is to combine an interest in what other people think with a numerical fluency, to represent numbers in different ways, whether as hatch marks, one and two digit numbers, x’s for one, o’s for five, etc. — however the child wants to represent them.
So, as you gather, I don’t really have a problem with surveys or bar graphs. The important thing is that the child is allowed to find the solution in his or her own way and develops a way to conceptualize the problems.
What I do have a problem with is testing the proficiency of the child for any other than a diagnostic purpose. My daughter has no problem with the surveys — we play Math games at home, we have fun with numbers. My daughter’s classmates don’t always do so well. Since they all have the same teacher, the variation must be found outside the classroom. To evaluate the teacher based on whether the child, who just came in from Russia and is now dealing with learning rudimentary communication skills in English, can successfully complete a survey and put in the form of a bar graph is worse than absurd — it is counter-productive and often produced by self-serving motives.
It is likely to be motivated by factors that have more to do with a desire to reshape the economic landscape and the distribution of power in society than they have to do with a desire to provide children with a safe environment in which they are valued and nurtured. Donna Kerr wrote in her “Democracy, Nurturance, and Community” (1996)
about how nurture was ignored and gave way to dominationon; she highlighted the difficulty in determining the difference between nurture and domination saying, “we are commonly hard pressed to discern the difference. It [nurture] has something to do with love, but then domination sometimes masquerades in the cloak of love.”
If the Common Core is to be something other than a masquerade of love, it needs to be a set of suggestions, not a list of mandates. There may be problems with the standards themselves, but the bigger problem is not what is in the standards, but that they are mandated by a force outside the educational community.
If were truly to have a rational system –and by rational I mean the highest social rationality, nurturing those who will be the warp and woof, the alpha and omega of our future society– then we would do something much different. We would arrive at standards that are tentative and open to change. We would use them as benchmarks to gather information, not transform our public education system into a hand-maiden of the testing industry. We would use the results to help identify where students are having problems, not to hold them back, but to give them extra attention.
The flip side of this is that we would trust our teachers to use this information to the best effect. After all, I would ask all of you who are reading this, how many teachers did you have who were truly indifferent? who were truly ineffective? In my experience, very few. The systems needs to work on trust, not to form a 21st century Panoptican.
Finally, if someone believes that E.D. Hirsch is right –and I believe there is a lot of value in what he says– then make sure we send out his books to the parents of children. Let us at least try to make sure the parent of a 3rd grader knows herself what Dr. Hirsch believes every 3rd grader should know. Give the parent of a 3rd grader one of his ‘What your 3rd Grader needs to know’ books. Maybe then they can talk together about the Solar System, the volumes of solids, the Vikings (not Minnesota), prisms, sentence structure and all the rest. Let’s reach out to all parents, providing those who are less affluent with at least some of the resources that more affluent parents with higher levels of education provide their children.
Set standards and if they are good, people will gravitate to them. But don’t use them to whip the system into shape. What is always missing from these talks is that the system is in good shape with the exception of areas of concentrated poverty. Standards for schools can’t improve that because our society’s standards of decency and concern for those who are not well off is far too low.
“Finally, if someone believes that E.D. Hirsch is right –and I believe there is a lot of value in what he says– then make sure we send out his books to the parents of children. Let us at least try to make sure the parent of a 3rd grader knows herself what Dr. Hirsch believes every 3rd grader should know. Give the parent of a 3rd grader one of his ‘What your 3rd Grader needs to know’ books. Maybe then they can talk together about the Solar System, the volumes of solids, the Vikings (not Minnesota), prisms, sentence structure and all the rest. Let’s reach out to all parents, providing those who are less affluent with at least some of the resources that more affluent parents with higher levels of education provide their children.”
Very good point. In my experience, at least, there is a huge amount of confusion and secrecy surrounding this stuff. I can tell this is going to bleed into another rant about TERC math, so I’ll stop there.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
The article referenced and many of the comments here confuse two important points. Common Core is not based on E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge. In fact, they are totally unrelated except for the fact that Hirsch seems to back the Common Core. The Common Core does not fill up children’s heads with facts like Hirsch advocates and like these teachers decry. I am a fierce opponent of the school reform movement but i support the Common Core because it is closely aligned with the 21st century skills curriculum (http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/P21CommonCoreToolkit.pdf). The implementation is flawed and the reforms that are happening simultaneously are really bad but the standards are very good. E.D. Hirsch is the worst person to defend the Common Core because he conflates his own (in my opinion, terrible) Core Knowledge with the new standards. One of the problems, and I guess I am suffering from this too, is that the CCSS are very open ended with no curriculum attached so they can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. I hold no illusions that the forthcoming curriculum and testing regime will take most of the potential of the CCSS and suck the life out of them. However, I think that many of the critiques of the Common Core are really taking aim at other rheeform efforts while ignoring the actual content of the common core. The Common Core is aimed at developing reading, thinking, and reasoning skills and it has nothing to do with the empty vessel philosophy that drives much of the reform movement and that is is the backbone of ED Hirsch’s work.
And when was teaching kids to read, think, and reason not the goal? Oh yes, it was before NCLB. The Common Core standards are so developmentally inappropriate It’s criminal. 3rd graders shouldn’t be reading Tolstoy and they certainly can’t synthesize, cite, and support points. They are 8. When we start listening to people like David Coleman, not an educator, when the k-3 standards,are written by no early childhood expert, teacher, etc., and when we believe testing kids ad nauseum is teaching, I say hide your kids in a private school because this is nothing but a money maker.
If you think that 3rd graders are reading Tolstoy, you have never looked at the common core. The Common Core standards outline certain skills but they are not a curriculum. If your school is teaching Tolstoy to 3rd graders that is a serious problem that is totally unrelated to Common Core. Not sure if you looked at my post either since I stated the same points that you are making. All I am saying is that it is not a fair critique of the Common Core to attack textbooks, tests, curriculum, hastily developed materials, and a bad implementation plan on the standards themselves. I agree that the primary grade standards need more input from primary teachers and that upper grade standards need more clarity on the issue of non-fiction reading. I also believe that we should not implement anything without more review, state curriculum development, time for publishers to create great materials rather than slapping a CC sticker on the front of their old textbooks, and time for teachers and leaders to provide feedback. I believe it is possible to support the standards despite the toxic environment. I think that the many CC critics need to get a little more specific because I have not heard a lot of that. I have heard a lot of frustration and I can’t say that I blame anyone for that. And 3rd graders should be able to support what they do with evidence from a text. That isn’t an outrageous request.
Maybe I’m just too skeptical, but I suspect that the Gates funded architects of the Common Core “State” Standards created them with the intention of following them up with the Common Core “State” Curriculum.
The perception of wiggle room within the standards could just be the Trojan horse that is leading us to a national curriculum, to tie up those loose ends and make sure that every child in each grade is on the same page on the same day of their lives.
The Common Core answers one very small part of the P21 framework (the inner green section) and it does a lousy job of that. The CCSS does nothing to answer the need for the 4 Cs or life skills or technology skills. And the four gray rings at the bottom? That’s the extension of the CCSS that is currently strangling American public education.
The Common Core is the foundation of the testing and privatization regime that has taken hold of education. While the standards may sound fancy and strong to some (they aren’t), the fact is, they are an attempt to nationalize education and standardize teaching and learning. When schools (especially urban and poor schools) can’t keep up, they are closed and/or bought up by the charter organization that wants it most.
The instructional materials that have been created are stifling and extremely low-level (again, going against what P21 had in its vision), where teachers are being told exactly how to teach and benchmark assessments are holding them accountable for following those rules to a tee. For an example, see Connected Math, which prescribes strict adherence to a Pearson plan, complete with warnings about straying from that “proven” path.
And, as a commenter already described, the standards are developmentally inappropriate for most kids at their levels. Six-year-olds doing data analysis seems to be a good example. Bar graphs, believe it or not, are highly abstract, which doesn’t fit well into a young child’s schema. Especially when they are asked to analyze them.
Sure, there may be some kids who can handle that type of thinking, but that’s another reason the Common Core is dangerous: it tries to keep all kids doing the same thing at the same time. No room for differentiation. If a teacher differentiates, the benchmark assessments will reflect that as bad teaching, not good.
You are making my case for me. Standards are not curriculum and although the curricular atrocities you describe are indeed bad, they are unrelated to Common Core. The Common Core says nothing about everyone doing the same thing at the same time and it absolutely addresses all of the areas of the P21 better than most state curricula. We both support the P21 but those are also only standards. Curriculum is still developed locally (or in many cases purchased locally, unfortunately). If you don’t like Connected Math, that is fine. It sounds like it is very bad. However, do the Common Core standards prescribe any specific textbook? No they don’t. Is there anything in the first grade standards about asking 1st graders to independently create and interpret a bar graph? No and no. We just need to be specific and accurate in our criticisms. This is why text based evidence is important for students. It will help them when they get older and comment on blog posts!
At least Hirsch offers something specific as an alternative whereas the other side whines “We weren’t consulted. It isn’t democratic. We’re the specialists. Stop everything until you give us veto power input.” Spitting against the wind. If they are serious, like good ENTREPRENEURS, they would offer their own kit and curriculum. But so many educators, knowledgeable as they claim to be about early childhood development, can do no more that sqwak and gobble. “If you know it, show it.” Simple as that. Don’t mumbo jumbo us with educationese psychologetics.
There are many curriculums out ere developed by teachers. Ad most teachers can develop their own methods and lesson plans…that’s why we are professionals. We used to have a say in what we used but this garbage takes all that away. And yes, would you like the entrepreneurs deciding what the best medical treatment options without consulting scientists and doctors? Teachers are not entrepreneurs….I am a teacher, I teach. I married an entrepreneur which means he started HIS own business. I couldn’t do what he does and he couldn’t do what I do.
Hirsch isn’t an early childhood educator. Children are hard-wired for concrete experiential and largely unstructured learning in the earliest years, NOT for direct instruction, NOT for abstract thinking, and certainly not for hours of seatwork as 4YO’s and 5YO’s. Most K-12 educators know this, and it’s part and parcel of early childhood education, so it would have been absolutely appropriate to take those educational needs into account when designing the K-3 curriculum – but precisely ZERO early childhood educators were even consulted in the process, let alone heard.
Hirsch is a college English professor; college students learn differently from children ages 0-8; it’s precisely WHY Early Childhood has its own certification. Hirsch proposing K-3 curriculum is right up there with non-educators running the country’s Department of Education and dictating policy in terms of ridiculousness and inappropriateness. I wouldn’t suggest hours of playtime and a sensory-rich environment as the best mode of learning for college English students, but Hirsch has no problem with the idea of imposing his mode of instruction on young children. What Hirsch offers as an “alternative” (and I use that term VERY loosely!) really isn’t a viable alternative at all.
Remembering, of course, that Core Knowledge is totally unrelated and largely contrary to the Common Core standards. The Common Core standards do not involve seatwork, direct instruction and abstract thinking for Kindergartners. Hirsch does! Thank you for being the first poster to differentiate between Core Knowledge and Common Core. People need to argue the facts of the case.
From Stephen Krashen, with link to Susan Ohanian:
There is no research evidence showing that (the language arts) standards written by an entrepreneur and a lawyer will educate kids to be “better than anybody else in the world.”
Susan Ohanian http://vtdigger.org/2013/02/20/ohanian-vermont-public-schools-who-decides/
Educators are not entrepreneurs and they should not be modeled on them. The returns we see are long-term — they are 20 years of half a century down the road.
The error of equating education with business is at the core of many — if not the vast majority — of problems we have.
Besides, there are loads of competing curriculum sets out there. Are you going to tell us next that the market will pick the best one? Or, would it be possible for you to admit what research on innovations has constantly shown — it is the rare exception that that best product wins, the product that wins the market is usually the product with the most money behind it.
By the way, Diane’s grandson was not doing a data analysis — he was gathering data. Maybe he did analyze it when he got to his class, but he was doing something that was totally appropriate for a 6 year-old.
I would be Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, the hedgehog in Beatrix Potter’s book, “The Tale of ….”
I do not think, Ms Potter wrote about porcupines.
Definitely a hedgehog. Jan Brett has the cutest ones in many of her stories. Perhaps the first graders had enjoyed some beautiful picture books? One can hope.
This is a developmentally appropriate activity. Data collection, graphing and data analysis are common Math activities in pre-primary and primary education. They come from Math Their Way, a wonderful hands-on Math curriculum developed by teacher Mary Baretta-Lorton in the 70s. Typically, it begins with using real objects and people for graphing and patterning before moving on to symbolic graphs and patterns.
That said, children who haven’t had the hands-on experiences using real objects to create graphs might not understand symbolic graphs. Also, these activities are usually done as whole group and small group activities. Asking kids to do them on their own is advanced and might not be appropriate for every child this age, let alone as homework –a whole other issue.
I am waiting for Pineapple Hare to comment on this one!
Making graphs at that age is common. However, when my 2nd graders were introduced to graphs, they did not retain one once of info from the following years. Same goes for fractions. And the answer to why this happens is simple. We don’t teach a concept for a long period of time. We do it for about 4 or 5 days and move on to a whole new concept. In Asia, math concepts are fully developed. btw, we do the same with ELA. This is why I hate curriculum mapping.
A really important point — when an outsider is dictating what is taught in the class room they are not checked by actual observations of students. Even the best intentioned will have pressure put upon them to include this topic or that — over time the list of things that a student is supposed to know expands to such a point that the best a teacher can do is cover a small fraction of the material.
What develops from this is a set of standards about what we think students should know with unrealistic time allowed to achievement these outcomes. But just because you say some goal ‘should’ be reached doesn’t mean it will be reached.
The Common Core, when compared to state standards, actually addresses fewer topics. This should leave more time for students to practice, think and create in each area. That is one of the stated goals of the standards.
We wrote our own comments on the treatment of “data analysis” in K-3.
http://ccssimath.blogspot.com/2013/01/graphs-and-data-analysis-part-1.html
I did the Birthday graphs described on your website but with Kindergartners. We started first with making a real bar graph, which consisted of the children lining up according to their birth month. I took photos, including one of each child holding a card with the name of their birth month, which they then used to create the symbolic graph. That was hung on the classroom wall and referred to regularly. Photos of this can be seen here: http://s1325.beta.photobucket.com/user/Other_Spaces/media/KGBirthdayGraphs001_zps8d490cb6.jpg.html
That is an awesome post. Blogtastic.
“we no longer say yes, we say affirmative” -Flight of the Conchords