I found this great article at
http://www.edarticle.com/special-education/parenting-tips-for-special-needs-kids-with-math-disabilities.html.
It is a list of tips for parents with special needs kids and how they can help their student get better at math. The article explains that math is very poorly taught in elementary schools, because elementary teachers have math anxiety. Now, I am one of those teachers and would be a poor math teacher! However; my teammates that do teach math are amazing, so that part of the article upsets me. I see their point, but in general everyone that I know that teaches elementary school math is amazing. What is upsetting is how hard they have raised the mathematical standards in fifth grade. I feel that there is a big jump, ( I speak from a GA teacher's point-of-view), from 3rd and 4th grade to 5th grade. The math skills they are asked to learn are very high analytic problems, and they are not there yet. They get so lost and frustrated with having to think that outside of the box that they shut down. Maybe I am wrong, but it seems that content is much harder these days than it was when I was little. However, the standards have been raised, so I guess they have to be.
I teach 5th grade math and yes, it is hard! This is my 3rd year teaching 5th grade so I am familiar with the content yet, I always have to look over the lessons the night before and plan out how I want to approach the new concept in class. I know my students well and before I teach them I have to preplan what I want to teach them and what I want to assess them on. If I was asked to teach middle school math, I would definitely need to review the night before to make sure I remembered the concept and knew of a way to teach it.
ReplyDeleteBut yes, I would agree too - students nowadays are doing much more difficult homework and learning harder concepts, compared to when I was in the 5th grade.