Posts Tagged Children

Show And Tell – A Springboard For Math And Science Education

Before I started teaching, I imagined Show and Tell would consist of an interested group of young children listening politely to each other and passing items around with care. This assumption fell apart fairly quickly during my first year as a teacher. Although there were times that things ran smoothly, the problems with Show and Tell were many and I found myself avoiding the experience. Even four and five year old children competed about who brought the coolest things. The event became even less appealing as students wanted to have a turn playing with toys, bored children fidgeted, squirmed and lost interest or upset children disrupted the class routines as they tried to keep their items a secret. Show and Tell often became a weekly advertisement for the latest toy or fast food restaurant freebie.

Parents also complained of the stress of trying to remember Show and Tell days, of trying to help their child choose items to show or of dealing with indecisive children who wanted to bring something that would impress their classmates. Other parents took over the task completely, selecting objects and sending them with detailed notes to be read to the class or with instructions that no one was to touch the item nor was it to get broken. There had to be a better way.

In an effort to make Show and Tell work for the students, for me, and for busy parents, I picked one day a week for the activity and scheduled it as part of my math and science time. Everyone in the class was asked to bring the same item each week. I usually brought a few extras for the few who forgot. Instead of using show and tell times to give children practice in public speaking, I scheduled different days for them to speak in front of the class about something they had recorded in their math and science journals.

Parents received a letter explaining that the purpose of show and tell would be to extend the math, science and literacy programs by building vocabulary and practicing classification and comparative skills. The children were to have the responsibility of choosing the items, but from much narrower criteria.

The rules were: do not bring…

  • anything valuable, anything that could not be touched by all, or anything that would upset the student greatly if it got broken
  • anything alive, as students often have pet allergies and bugs in bottles are too often neglected
    items too large – ask – can they fit in a brown paper lunch bag? (exceptions here – books, and occasionally other items)
  • toys – as they caused too many problems as mentioned previously

The parents were to remind their son or daughter to choose an item from the list, but not to interfere with their child’s choice as long as it fit with the weekly list.

I also sent home a Show and Tell list for the whole year. This had a short note that suggested that the parents post the list on the fridge at their child’s eye level, that they encourage the child to cross off each item weekly and to start looking for the next item, and that they remind the child to pack the item in their backpack the night before.

Classroom Show and Tell rules were: students were to bring the items into the class at the beginning of the day, label them with name tags (children have printed name tags in their take home boxes; tape is in most centers) and put them on the Show and Tell display table. The children were always very excited on Show and Tell mornings and I scheduled some free time for them to look at the items on the table and to tell a few classmates about their items.

Sample Show and Tell list

When creating a yearly Show and Tell list, put the date first, then the item to bring, illustrated with a simple drawing and finally a brief description of what the class activity will be. Keep the font large. Here is a sample from my list.

  • An apple (not for snack) – sorting, classifying and measurement
  • Something round – math vocabulary such as edges, face, circle, circular, classifying items by a variety of criteria such as size, color, material
  • A leaf – sorting shapes, colors, counting points, graphing similar types, tracing leaf shapes on papers and creating charts of similar and different leaves
  • Something shiny – comparison, vocabulary – reflection, reflect, testing (with a flashlight) how each item reflects light
  • Something that can be recycled – knowledge of recycling, classifying items, counting, more, fewer
  • An old greeting card – measurement with blocks. How many blocks long is your card? How many one inch squares cover your card? Graphing holiday images
  • A shell – classify and sort by size, color, shape, observation drawings
  • Something about Canada (map, flag, book, trinket) – awareness of Canadian symbols, shape of country, shapes of provinces, counting provinces, graphing occurrences of similar symbols

I generally chose objects that complemented monthly themes.

Sample Show and Tell Lesson with a Rock

The children place their Show and Tell rocks on the center of the carpet, and then sit down in a circle around them. I start with observation type questions. “What do you notice about the rocks? How are they the same? How are they different?

Let’s sort the rocks by size. Which rock looks the largest? Which rock is the smallest? Let’s make a long line.” Everybody takes a turn placing his or her rock with student or teacher suggestions to rearrange the rocks when necessary.

“Now let’s sort the rocks by darker colors and lighter colors. We can put the darker rocks on this plastic mat and the lighter ones on the other mat and the striped or speckled rocks in the middle.” When this activity is finished and depending on the group attention span you can further investigations. Examples, “Are there more dark rocks or more light rocks? Are there fewer dull rocks or fewer shiny ones? Let’s sort the rocks by which ones wobble and which ones do not wobble. “

Counting items, graphing, extending math vocabulary or practicing other math concepts are easy to integrate into the lesson when there is a large quantity of the same object. Gear the lesson to the attention span of the whole group. Children who want to continue comparing their rocks, for instance with a balance scale, can do so at center time.

Next I model an observation drawing on chart paper. Draw with a marker and talk out loud to describe your thinking. “I noticed that there are more wobbly rocks and fewer rocks that do not wobble. I am going to draw that for my observation drawing. I will draw a line down my paper and put more wobbly rocks on one side and fewer rocks that don’t wobble on the other. The rocks are mainly round shapes so I will make circles. I will add dots to some to make them look speckled. I am putting little lines beside the rocks on this side to make them look like they are moving. Now I will color in with crayons so I don’t cover up my drawing lines. I will color some light grey and some dark grey. Now I need to print the word, wobbly under my wobbly rocks. What sound do I hear first and what letter do I use? What is the next sound and letter?” Do the same with the words not wobbly. Finish with a drawing of individual rocks. “I am going to draw the rock I brought to show on the other page. It is black and has white stripes.” Stamp the drawing with the date stamp.

The children then sit at tables and record one or more of their observations about the lesson in their science and math journals. This is an open-ended activity and results will depend on the developmental level of each child. The children take turns stamping the date on their page.

This method worked well for the children, their parents and for me. All the children had an opportunity to be involved during each Show and Tell day and reviewing old, or learning new, science, math, and literacy concepts were a part of each Show and Tell experience.

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The Science Education Belief In America

Political leaders, tech executives, and academics often claim that the U.S. is falling behind in math and science education. They cite poor test results, declining international rankings, and decreasing enrollment in the hard sciences. They urge us to improve our education system and to graduate more engineers and scientists to keep pace with countries such as India and China.

Yet a new report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, tells a different story. The report disproves many confident pronouncements about the alleged weaknesses and failures of the U.S. education system. This data will certainly be examined by both sides in the debate over highly skilled workers and immigration. The argument by Microsoft, Google, Intel, and others is that there are not enough tech workers in the U.S.

The authors of the report, the Urban Institute’s Hal Salzman and Georgetown University professor Lindsay Lowell, show that math, science, and reading test scores at the primary and secondary level have increased over the past two decades, and U.S. students are now close to the top of international rankings. Perhaps just as surprising, the report finds that our education system actually produces more science and engineering graduates than the market demands.

These findings go against what has been the dominant position about our education system and our science and engineering workforce. Consider reports on national competitiveness that policymakers often turn to, such reports as the 2005 “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” by the National Academy of Sciences. This report says the U.S. is in dire straits because of poor math and science preparation.

The report points to declining test scores, fewer students taking math and science courses, and low-quality curriculums and teacher preparation in K-12 education compared to other countries.

The call has been taken up by some of the most prominent people in business and politics. Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, said at an education summit in 2005, “In the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind.” President George W. Bush addressed the issue in his 2006 State of the Union address. “We need to encourage children to take more math and science, and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations,” he said.

Salzman and Lowell found the reverse was true. Their report shows U.S. student performance has steadily improved over time in math, science, and reading. It also found enrollment in math and science courses is actually up. For example, in 1982 high school graduates earned 2.6 math credits and 2.2 science credits on average.

By 1998, the average number of credits increased to 3.5 math and 3.2 science credits. The percent of students taking chemistry increased from 45% in 1990 to 55% in 1996 and 60% in 2004. Scores in national tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the SAT, and the ACT have also shown increases in math scores over the past two decades.

And the new report again went against the grain when it compared the U.S. to other countries. It found that over the past decade the U.S. has ranked a consistent second place in science. It also was far ahead of other nations in reading and literacy and other academic areas. In fact, the report found that the U.S. is one of only a few nations that has consistently shown improvement over time.

Why the sharp discrepancy? Salzman says that reports citing low U.S. international rankings often misinterpret the data. Review of the international rankings, which he says are all based on one of two tests, the Trends in International Mathematics & Science Study (TIMMS) or the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), show the U.S. is in a second-ranked group, not trailing the leading economies of the world as is commonly reported.

In fact, the few countries that place higher than the U.S. are generally small nations, and few of these rank consistently high across all grades, subjects, and years tested. Moreover, he says, serious methodological flaws, such as different test populations, and other limitations preclude drawing any meaningful comparison of school systems between countries.

As far as our workforce is concerned, the new report showed that from 1985 to 2000 about 435,000 U.S. citizens and permanent residents a year graduated with bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in science and engineering. Over the same period, there were about 150,000 jobs added annually to the science and engineering workforce.

These numbers don’t include those retiring or leaving a profession but do indicate the size of the available talent pool. It seems that nearly two-thirds of bachelor’s graduates and about a third of master’s graduates take jobs in fields other than science and engineering.

Michael Teitelbaum, vice-president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which, among other things, works to improve science education, says this research highlights the troubling weaknesses in many conventional policy prescriptions.

Proposals to increase the supply of scientists and engineers rapidly, without any objective evidence of comparably rapid growth in attractive career opportunities for such professionals, might actually be doing harm.

In previous columns, I have written about research my team at Duke University completed that shattered common myths about India and China graduating 12 times as many engineers as the U.S. We found that the U.S. graduated comparable numbers and was far ahead in quality. Our research also showed there were no engineer shortages in the U.S., and companies weren’t going offshore because of any deficiencies in U.S. workers.

So, there isn’t a lack of interest in science and engineering in the U.S., or a deficiency in the supply of engineers. However, there may sometimes be short-term shortages of engineers with specific technical skills in certain industry segments or in various parts of the country.

The National Science Foundation data show that of the students who graduated from 1993 to 2001, 20% of the bachelor’s holders went on to complete master’s degrees in fields other than science and engineering and an additional 45% were working in other fields. Of those who completed master’s degrees, 7% continued their education and 31% were working in fields other than science and engineering.

There isn’t a problem with the capability of U.S. children. Even if there were a deficiency in math and science education, there are so many graduates today that there would be enough who are above average and fully qualified for the relatively small number of science and engineering jobs. Science and engineering graduates just don’t see enough opportunity in these professions to continue further study or to take employment.

With U.S. competitiveness at stake, we need to get our priorities straight. Education is really important, and a well-educated workforce is what will help the U.S. keep its global edge. But emphasizing math and science education over humanities and social sciences may not be the best prescription for the U.S. We need our children to receive a balanced and broad education.

Perhaps we should focus on creating demand for the many scientists and engineers we graduate. There are many problems, from global warming to the development of alternative fuels to cures for infectious diseases, that need to be solved. Rather than blaming our schools, let’s create exciting national programs that motivate our children to help solve these problems.

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Categories For Special Education – Which One Fits My Child

Have special education personnel stated that your child was ineligible for special education, because they do not fit into one of the 13 eligible categories? Does your child have Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) but you were told by school personnel that this does not fit into the 13 eligible categories? Has your child been diagnosed as emotionally disturbed and you believe the child has autism? This article will discuss how you can determine what category of classification that your child can receive special education services under. By knowing these categories you can advocate for the one that meets your child’s needs.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) states that every child with a disability must receive a free appropriate public education (FAPE). Also special education services to meet their unique needs. Labels or classifications do not determine, if a particular child is eligible for a particular special education service, though sometimes special education personnel act like it does.

Categories:

  1. Autism: If you suspect that your child has autism ask special education personnel to give him or her, a childhood autism rating scale (CARS). The scale is done by the parent answering 13 questions about their child, and a knowledgeable person giving a score to the scale. The higher the number the more chance that the child has autism. If the scale is positive take your child to a specialized Pediatrician that specializes in autism. Pervasive developmental disorder is on the Autism spectrum. Autism is one of the eligible categories for special education services. So a child with PDD is eligible for special education services under the category of autism.
  2. OHI: For a child to be eligible under this category usually requires some type of documentation from the child’s physician. Many children with ADD and ADHD receive special education services under this category.
  3. Mental Retardation: Determined by IQ score; a child’s IQ score under 75 is considered to be in the mental retardation range. Be careful if your child’s IQ is normal and decreases as they grow older, this is indicative of an inappropriate education, not necessarily mental retardation.
  4. Emotional Disturbance (ED): Many children with autism are being given an ED label-Why? Because in my opinion special education personnel are reluctant to give a child an autism label due to cost of special education services. For a child to truly be ED, they must have no other disability!
  5. Deafness: This is a total loss of hearing and usually requires physician documentation.
  6. Hearing Impairment: Not a total loss of hearing as above!
  7. Visual Impairment: Severe impairment not fixed by glasses or contacts.
  8. Deaf-Blindness: Total loss of hearing and total loss of sight.
  9. Specific Learning Disability (LD): Children with reading difficulty despite appropriate instruction, math difficulty despite appropriate instruction, dyslexia, visual processing disorder, sensory integration disorder (SID), auditory processing disorder, all qualify under LD.
  10. Multiple Disabilities. Must include another disability and also mental retardation.
  11. Orthopedic Impairment: A child with Cerebral Palsy would qualify under this category.
  12. Speech or Language Impairment. Includes delayed speech, communication disorder, language disorder such as dyslexia, receptive and expressive language disorder etc.
  13. Traumatic Brain Injury: Any injury to the brain either at birth or when the child was older.

By understanding the 13 categories and what is required for each one, you will be able to be an informed advocate for your child. Children who need special education services and do not get them may have their lives ruined forever!

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