Casey signed up for this online math game program that they use here in Australia (http://www.mathletics.com.au/). It is a clunky interface, but he likes it (and Ripley begged to join as well). We always talk about how test taking is a poor substitute for actual learning, but watching him answer questions really made me realize exactly how tests can often measure more about how well a kid understands the test than their actual knowledge:
Casey had to shade 3/4 of a figure. He thought he was supposed to leave 3/4 of the figure the original color, as shading on the green he colored 1/4 of it -- he understood 3/4 fine, but not what shading it meant. Now he apparently doesn't understand regular fractions, the test tells us.
Casey had to round numbers off to the nearest hundred. The numbers were in the thousands, but he didn't realize that you had to rewrite the whole number, not just the hundreds part (e.g.: 5433 became 400, not 5400). So the test says he doesn't know rounding.
Casey didn't know what the word "descending" meant, so he didn't know what order to put numbers in. Now the test tells us he doesn't know which numbers are bigger than others.
In all of these occasions: once told what to do, Casey got every problem correct. So does this test actually test math skills or something else? To me, what he was supposed to do seemed obvious, but to him, it obviously wasn't. Just like the kids are missing really basic language cues in a new country (e.g.: Rip had no idea what to do when her teacher said to "queue up"), I think you need to learn a whole language of test taking. If you want to take tests, that is.
1 comment:
Dearest Sharon, The focus of schools there is very different from Farm School from your description. Terminology is certainly an issue. One would think that the teachers would recognize that the kids might need some explanation and offer it to make them feel more comfortable.
Teaching to the test winds up making the teacher look good if the kids do well but it doesn't guarantee that the kids understand the concepts. One of the things that impresses me about Farm School is having the kids work their way to a conclusion.
It certainly has been shown that kids do well on tests when they understand the language of the test--how something is worded can make all the difference as evidenced by Casey's comprehension
once you explained the meaning. Perhaps another book in the offing--An American Child in Aussie Schools! xx, Mom
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