What I find absolutely fascinating is that the schools - while well-intentioned - send materials home or hold math nights for the parents to “help” the parents teach their children at home instead of analyzing what they should be doing differently!

As if school were a charity trying to help and not the public institution, paid by our collective money for the clear purpose of teaching our children.

Excuse me? What are our kids doing in school from 9 to 3 every day is they are not learning how to read, are not learning math, are not learning geography?
And what are we paying for? Glorified babysitting from people that look down at you if you don’t agree to their applying their babbling nonsense on your son or daughter?

How blind can one be, how brainwashed or sorry, simple-minded, to not see how little our children learn!

fromEurope,

I understand your frustration - however, that does not happen at every school.  There are a wide range of different teaching strategies in use, as evidenced by the debate about reading going on for the last few days.  I had a different, but interesting, experience with my 8 year old.  To pull one of john meyer’s statements up from the reading blog, he said, “Marzano and colleagues from the US on Classroom Instruction that Work and John Hattie?s Visible Learning.  Both speak to the power of practice ...” 

Power of Practice - hmmm.  I was surprised, and pleased, when my son brought home a raft of multiplication exercises.  The one on the top was marked 30/30.  Then next: 30/30, and so on.  I congratulated him on doing so well.  He said that he did it a couple of times with a few mistakes.  I didn’t figure out what he meant at first until I looked at the drill sheets again - they were all exactly the same!  The teacher had given them the same exercise seven days in a row.  The first couple of days he made some mistakes and threw them away and brought the perfect ones home.

What had he learned about the questions he did wrong?  How to find the correct answer?  No.  He had learned that the answer to the third question was ‘30’.  Given the same question on another sheet in another place he would get it wrong again.

No wonder they call it ‘Drill and Kill’, when they do exactly the same thing.  I whose wisdom does it make sense to do that and call it learning?

John I would agree that it does not happen in ALL the schools. However in the majority of the elementary schools, math is taught abysimally.

When we talk about practice, I certainly don’t have in mind in any shape of form the type of “practice” that your son was exposed to.
Sorry, that is just one incompetent’s teacher idea of practice.
It has nothing to do with practice, it’s just another example of the cargo cult that seems to be ingrained in so many elementary teachers.
They copy the appearance, or bits and pieces of an instructional method and - due to their magnificent ignorance - they think they are teaching according to the method.
Just like for example for a teacher my son had, the fact that once in a while she would tell the students what sound correspond to a letter in a word one of them was struggling with, was in her mind teaching reading phonetically!

Is the example with your son what you understand by practice?

fromEurope,

No, this is not the type of ‘practice’ I would use with my students.  However, it certainly explains why I see the problems I do in Grade 9 students.  It also explains the Ministry’s tendency to pooh-pooh more traditional approaches emphasizing good grounding in the basics before moving on to more complex concepts.

Then the Ministery has no clue.

Again, the root of the problem that what was passing as practice WAS NOT PRACTICE. So instead having competent teachers teaching math the Ministry decided that there should be less practice. Very impressive!

Practice works really well combined with quality feedback
- how I did
- what can I do to get better?

Even with worksheet right answer math stuff, the simple act of
having a space for writing in the correct answer
helps
and when the learner can articulate why s/he got the answer or did not get it
is HUGE!!!

And yes, feedback that is quality is too seldom done.

And if you just praise or blame, it makes things worse.  See Carol Dweck’s work
or any successful coach

Tom Coughlin of the NY Giants football never seems to smile
but he has noted that in every practice he finds something positive in the execution of a play, but he is specific about what works.
His goal is for the team to do the good things automatically, then they can concentrate on the weaknesses.

I learned a lot about teaching by coaching and being coached

I am clearly a contributor who shares perspective from the ground as a teacher.

I am competent in math given my post secondary training and what I do on the ground each and every day…...in this context….. elementary math curriculum while my own childen were hostage to it -  MADE ME WEEP! 

I remember the grade three period with special horror.

we need better!