SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

Joy for JUMP

Today's post is by John Bachmann:

A number of years ago I had the chance to tutor the very bright daughter of a friend in grade 10 algebra.  In a few weeks she went from failing every test to being near the top of her class.  Was I that good? Actually, it wasn’t about me at all.  What it was about is one of the most pervasive and pernicious myths in education: the myth that some people “get” math and some people don’t, i.e. you’ve either got the “math gene” or you don’t.  Once my student realized that her problems with algebra was the result of her impatience (she got flustered when she couldn’t get the answer right away, which happened a lot since she hadn’t been taught her times tables) she slowed down and started getting right answers and in no time flat was not only ripping through her assignments but loving them!

John Mighton has been challenging the myth of the math gene for years and his JUMP program is becoming noticed in some pretty influential circles including, this week, the New York Times.

Particularly noteworthy, are the graphs in the article that not only show that achievement scores go up but that the variation between the lowest and highest goes down dramatically.  Also interesting is the note that researchers from Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education are studying the effectiveness of the JUMP program. If the study comes back as positive as it appears it might, will direct instruction begin to creep back into OISE?

Look Who Can Spell: We would have a challenge with their names alone!

Here are the names of the finalists in the Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge Spelling Bee Regional Competition. 

Primary Category
1.  Rahul Modi
2.  Anthony Dang
3.  Maithili Shende

Junior Category
1.  Shiv Kathuria
2.  Daniella Kistemaker
3.  Jai Kathuria

Intermediate Category 
1.  Rhiannan Pinnell
2.  Parani Ragu
3.  Jaspreet Sagoo

Canada's poor test scores are often blamed on its large immigrant population. The truth is that our students' test scores would be lower without our immigrants.

The Peg Memory Technique

Human short-term memory is extremely limited, being able to hold only about seven items at a time. However, humans have devised some ingenious ways around this bottleneck, including chunking items (for example, how you remember phone numbers) and linking things you need to remember to locations that you know well. Here's a third way, namely the peg technique, as outlined in a very cool book, Sleights of Mind, which reveals how magicians exploit vulnerabilities hardwired into human brains. As the authors write about the peg technique, "Why aren't children taught this technique to learn their multiplication tables or other lists of facts? If neurologists could harness these techniques, maybe they could teach Alzheimer's patients to remember better the order in which to don their clothing each morning, maybe enable them to live in their own homes for one more year."

The following excerpt (pp. 125-127) shows how a magician named Apollo enhances his memory. His increased ability to remember things allows him to pull off all kinds of stunts, from "mind-reading" to card tricks.

"Apollo explained that by mentally associating mundane numbers and objects (or people, places, things, activities, concepts, and so forth) with imagined wild caricatures of those things, he could retain the memory of a large number of those associations for an incredibly long time. So long that it didn't seem like memory at all, it seemed magical. He demonstrated by asking Susana to write a list of 15 items, in random order and hidden from his view, and to call them out as she proceeded. 'Number 6: wolf; number 11: market; number 2: roulette...' ...

"Apollo listened but did not appear to be concentrating particularly carefully. At the end of the list, Apollo said, 'Okay, now I'll say them back to you in order. Please check them against your list.' Susana ensured that Apollo could not see her written list as he proceeded to read them off from his own mental list as promised: 'Number one: tennis ball; number two: roulette...' He got them all perfectly. He then recited the list backward. Next he asked Susana to cross out seven of the items from the list in random order and to state, out loud, just the number of each entry as it was crossed out. The list remained hidden from Apollo's view as Susana crossed out her selections. Apollo then reported the remaining undeleted items, in numerical order.

"Apollo's performance was a straightforward and extremely impressive display of mnemonic power. We reeled under its implications. 'How did you do that?' Apollo explained that it was an easy trick that served to boost human memory capacity immensely. 'All I did was to associate each number-object pair with an imagined caricature of each object. But the real trick is that I have a list of standard objects that I use to represent each number. It's based on similar-sounding objects, or number homonyms. For example, the number one sounds like 'wand', so when I make the association between the object and the number, I'm really associating a wand with the chosen object. In this case I burned the image of a tennis ball holding a wand into my memory. Then when the time comes to recite the list, I take each number in turn (backward or forward), recall the associated number-homonym that I always use for that number, and then use that to jog my memory as to the associated object from Susana's list. To delete an item from the list, I imagine each object-number pair being destroyed graphically as Susana crosses it from her list. In the case of the wand-wielding tennis ball, I imagined the pair on fire and then the tennis ball exploding from the internal pressure..."

Sunday at the Movies (Charter Schools)

This is SQE's very own video, available free in DVD form, and it shows just how good charter schools can be. Not many parents can watch this without wishing they could send/could have sent their children to one of these schools. 

Everybody is good at something

Congratulations to the University of Western Ontario for making it onto Playboy magazine’s list of the ten top party schools. Ranked fourth, Western is the only Canadian university to make the list. Quite a distinction. Well done!

So this honour (to my alma mater, BTW) has started me thinking about other top ten lists that Ontario elementary and secondary schools might be eligible for. For example, what about the school that showed the most movies in one year? Or had the most popcorn parties? The most hours lost to non-academic pursuits like assemblies, field days, parties, class trips, values courses, and so forth? 

I’m confident that a great many Ontario schools will be able to offer strong competition in these categories. Bring it on!

Reinventing schools

All over Ontario, declining enrolment has led to threats to close dozens of schools, and the natives are restless:  Hamilton, Peterborough, Oakville, and many more communities. Feelings are running high, and there appear to be no easy answers. But there is one possibility that is not being explored.

This option is laid out in our new quick study “Danger - or Opportunity?”. Basically, we are proposing that instead of closing schools with unused space, the school boards find creative ways to keep them open - by, for example, renting out the surplus space to agencies with complementary services or by moving the students to smaller venues like a YMCA or a church. These reinvented schools offer potentially significant benefits - but they would require flexibility and openness to new ideas on the part of their school boards.

Oh well, it seemed like a good idea at the time….....

One way to earn money in your spare time

Do you know of a Canadian university student who would like to earn $1,500 plus a trip to Washington? Then tell him or her about this essay-writing contest on the morality of free enterprise. 

The Tedious Board paints itself into a corner

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) trustees are holding their noses, but it may be that the relentless hemorrhage of some 5,000 students every year (along with the resulting surplus of space in schools and parents' resistance to school closures) is going to force the board to agree to a group of "private-school-like academies". More here.

Clearly, the board is in an approach-avoidance conflict. If the board doesn't offer the kind of schools parents want, parents and students will continue to vote with their feet and enrollment will continue to decline. On the other hand, the trustees suspect and fear, deep in their hearts, that the new schools will be very popular, with favourable reviews and long waiting lists - much more popular than the white bread progressive schools they favour and which enjoy a virtual monopoly at present.

If the trustees dither much longer, there will be no possibility of launching the new academies this September. If it weren't so important, their indecision would be amusing.

Reading matters

This new study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation reports that grade 3 kids who are reading below grade level are 4 times less likely to graduate from high school. And if the kids are from poor families, they are 13 times less likely to graduate from high school than their wealthier peers who read at grade level or better. The researchers didn't look at grade 1 kids who are reading below grade level but it is likely, based on other research, that the same applies to grade 1 kids. 

Primary teachers have an awesome responsibility. Their students' futures are literally in their hands!

While I'm on the subject, we promised to mention the International Dyslexia Association's (Ontario Branch) conference in Toronto on May 7 in Toronto. More information here.

Beyond Comprehension

We have frequently mentioned the importance of phonics in beginning reading and how important it is that children learn how to decode. After all, it's pretty hard to understand a written passage if you can't read the words!

However, merely learning to decode is not the whole story. It is also necessary that children be able to understand the words they are reading. And that's where vocabulary and general knowledge enter the picture - as brilliantly elucidated by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. in this article from the latest issue of American Educator, the magazine of the American Federation of Teachers. Consider the following passage (taken from Dr. Hirsch's article).

"When Luca Turin was a boy growing up in Paris, according to Chandler Burr's ebullient new book about him, 'he was famous for boring everyone to death with useless, disconnected facts, like the distance between the earth and the moon in Egyptian cubits'. Mr. Burr sets out to explain how such obsessive curiosity turned Mr. Turin into a pioneering scientist who, in the author's estimation, deserves a Nobel Prize."

Dr. Hirsch points out that, although the passage does not require expert background knowledge, there are still a number of things that readers need to know if they are to comprehend it. "We need to know first that this is a book review, which aims to tell us what the book is about and whether it is worth reading. We need to understand that the reviewer is favorably disposed to the book, calling it 'ebullient', and that it is a nonfiction work about a scientist named Luca Turin. we need to have at least a vague semantic grasp of key words like ebullient, boring, obsessive, pioneering, estimation. We need to know some of the things mentioned with exactness, but not others. It's not necessary to know how long a cubit is. Indeed, the text implies that this is an odd bit of information, and we can infer that it is some form of measurement. We need to know in general what Paris is, what the moon is and that it circles the earth, that it is not too far away in celestial terms, and we need to have some idea what a Nobel Prize is and that it is very prestigious. Consider the knowledge domains included in this list. Paris belongs to history and geography; so does Egypt. The moon belongs to astronomy and natural history. The Nobel Prize belongs to general history and science."

The article goes on to explain how important a shared background of vocabulary and general knowledge are. Dr. Hirsch is making the case that all schools should teach a common curriculum - especially important given the incredible extent of student mobility (about one-third of American students every year, according to the article).

I have tried to hit the highlights of the article because I know that, with the exception of Nancy, few of our readers are likely to take the time to read the whole thing. However, it deals with an important concept, one with far-reaching implications, and I do urge you to take the time to learn about the importance of providing all children with excellent vocabularies and a generous fund of shared general knowledge.