The Venting Thread

[ciao_yall]

Back to singing, when we had to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution, my 7th grade teacher allowed us to sing it. Because... Schoolhouse Rock.

[Larimar]

My elementary school music teacher taught my class a song that consists of the names of all the states in alphabetical order. I still remember it and have occasionally found it useful over the years.

[ab_grp]

My elementary school music teacher taught my class a song that consists of the names of all the states in alphabetical order. I still remember it and have occasionally found it useful over the years.

We learned one of those (same song, maybe?) for chorus in elementary school, and I still sing it! I play a bunch of different trivia, and that song has helped me more than a few times.

[mamselle]

"Fifty, nifty U-ni-ted States from thir-teen o-ri-gin-al col-o-nies"...

That one?

M.

[Larimar]

Yup, that's the one.

[Vkw10]

I thought that everyone over 5 knew the alphabet. How do you read if you don't know the letters? Now I know why I see glazed eyes when I talk about alphabetizing the list of references.

My sixth graders knew the letters and the associated sounds. They knew "c" could sound similar to k or to s. What they didn't know was the standard arrangement from A to Z. Some of them knew chunks in order, but very few could recite all 26 letters from A to Z. Even those who knew the alphabet from A to Z hadn't practiced alphabetizing and knowledge doesn't automatically translate to application.

That's odd. I remember my niece learning the alphabet in kindergarten, she's 13 now. They had worksheets and sang the alphabet song, but she was proud that she already knew it because she'd learned it at home.

I'm glad to hear that some children are still learning alphabetical order. It's like addition and multiplication facts, something that seems minor but makes learning other skills easier.  There was a period in the early 1970s when rote memorization of multiplication facts wasn't considered important, so my mother drilled me in them at home. Although I disliked drilling them after school in 3rd grade, by middle school it was obvious that not knowing them was handicapping some of my classmates. Estimating and figuring percentages is hard when you don't have some grasp of multiplication facts.

[mamselle]

When I was a library assistant in 1st grade we were taught the A-B-C, B-C-D, C-D-E mnemonic to help file borrower cards quickly.

M.

[AmLitHist]

Long, but this might ring bells with some forumites:  Back in my country school, in the Stone Age (late 1960s), I had one of my mom's teachers and one of my dad's. We spent large chunks of time on the alphabet, the dictionary, and penmanship. 

We had lots of work in alphabetizing in second and third grades, and by third we also had to memorize the basic "hundreds" categories of the Dewey decimal system. 

We also did a lot of dictionary drills in third grade:  each student had a hardback Webster's, and the teacher would call out an unfamiliar word.  The first to find it would stand up and read the definition.  (We used to have to stand to recite in our third and fourth grade classes.)  I used to love those--first, I was always the nerdy girl with glasses and my nose in a book, and also, it was the only time (that, and spelling contests) where the captain of a team actually wanted me and I'd get picked first!

By fourth grade, when we were still doing penmanship lessons to refine our basic handwriting, Dad's former teacher incorporated timed writings to get us used to writing clearly with speed (rather than laboring to make every letter legible and pretty).  One of those exercises was a timed writing of the lowercase letters strung together, a-z. Once most of the class could meet her strict standards on that, the next exercise was a timed writing of the same thing--backwards. (Yes, I can still do it.)

All of these might sound petty, but all of us could write clearly--and spell, because we were drilled in root words and spelling rules from second grade on--and we were ready to learn note-taking by the middle of fourth grade and really kicked that into high gear in fifth. 

That same fourth-grade teacher was a stickler on arithmetic, too, and every single kid in her class knew our multiplication tables through the 12s.  She also taught us what I remember as "the formulas":  circumference, volume, area, etc.  And the Pythagorean Theorem--OMG, I thought that was witchcraft!  Not surprisingly, when my dad was still a kid on the farm (and for years afterward), neighbors from all around would come to him to tell them how much corn or beans or wheat a silo or grain bin or corn crib would hold; he'd eyeball it, estimate the dimensions, and figure it on the back of an envelope.  Mrs. Nehrkorn had taught it to him all those years before I came along. 

Of course, "the New Math" was in its stride when I got to first grade in 1966, so you can imagine the fights that caused:  Dad taught me the "regular" way, and all sorts of tips about estimating, etc., which was much faster, but it didn't meet the rule for showing my steps and such that the teachers wanted.  My parents rarely went to the school, but when there were meetings about New Math, Dad was there, front and center.  The teachers finally gave up and let me get by with doing it the old-fashioned way, and I never did learn the new-and-improved things they were teaching in class; I just did the problems in my head.   :-)

By the time we went to high school with the town kids, the teachers could always tell without looking up who the students from my grade school were.  That school operated on a shoestring, and the parents were 99% uneducated farm and factory workers themselves--what would be considered a "disadvantaged" district today.  But we learned.

[ab_grp]

Yup, that's the one.

Same here.

[apl68]

Okay, back to venting!

Our extended forecast calls for a chance of snow a week from now.  Really?  We went without snow for four straight winters, and now it looks like we may get it twice in one season?

I actually like to see snow.  The vent comes because now I may have to put out the caution tape around the library's property again in an effort to keep the four-wheel ATVs from destroying our yard.  Having foiled them once, I was really hoping we were done for this season. 

Maybe in the next week the chance of snow will dissipate.

[fishbrains]

Long, but this might ring bells with some forumites:  Back in my country school, in the Stone Age (late 1960s), I had one of my mom's teachers and one of my dad's. We spent large chunks of time on the alphabet, the dictionary, and penmanship. 

We had lots of work in alphabetizing in second and third grades, and by third we also had to memorize the basic "hundreds" categories of the Dewey decimal system. 

We also did a lot of dictionary drills in third grade:  each student had a hardback Webster's, and the teacher would call out an unfamiliar word.  The first to find it would stand up and read the definition.  (We used to have to stand to recite in our third and fourth grade classes.)  I used to love those--first, I was always the nerdy girl with glasses and my nose in a book, and also, it was the only time (that, and spelling contests) where the captain of a team actually wanted me and I'd get picked first!

By fourth grade, when we were still doing penmanship lessons to refine our basic handwriting, Dad's former teacher incorporated timed writings to get us used to writing clearly with speed (rather than laboring to make every letter legible and pretty).  One of those exercises was a timed writing of the lowercase letters strung together, a-z. Once most of the class could meet her strict standards on that, the next exercise was a timed writing of the same thing--backwards. (Yes, I can still do it.)

All of these might sound petty, but all of us could write clearly--and spell, because we were drilled in root words and spelling rules from second grade on--and we were ready to learn note-taking by the middle of fourth grade and really kicked that into high gear in fifth. 

That same fourth-grade teacher was a stickler on arithmetic, too, and every single kid in her class knew our multiplication tables through the 12s.  She also taught us what I remember as "the formulas":  circumference, volume, area, etc.  And the Pythagorean Theorem--OMG, I thought that was witchcraft!  Not surprisingly, when my dad was still a kid on the farm (and for years afterward), neighbors from all around would come to him to tell them how much corn or beans or wheat a silo or grain bin or corn crib would hold; he'd eyeball it, estimate the dimensions, and figure it on the back of an envelope.  Mrs. Nehrkorn had taught it to him all those years before I came along. 

Of course, "the New Math" was in its stride when I got to first grade in 1966, so you can imagine the fights that caused:  Dad taught me the "regular" way, and all sorts of tips about estimating, etc., which was much faster, but it didn't meet the rule for showing my steps and such that the teachers wanted.  My parents rarely went to the school, but when there were meetings about New Math, Dad was there, front and center.  The teachers finally gave up and let me get by with doing it the old-fashioned way, and I never did learn the new-and-improved things they were teaching in class; I just did the problems in my head.   :-)

By the time we went to high school with the town kids, the teachers could always tell without looking up who the students from my grade school were.  That school operated on a shoestring, and the parents were 99% uneducated farm and factory workers themselves--what would be considered a "disadvantaged" district today.  But we learned.

We had a required class our senior year of high school called "Grammar and Research." All seniors had to take the class. We did pretty much every exercise in the Harbrace and had to write a 10-page research paper. And when I say we had to type the essay, I mean we had to use an actual typewriter (no real computers back then) that many of us had to rent. If we didn't pass the class by the end of the year (the school was on something of a quarter system, so you theoretically had a couple of attempts), we didn't graduate, and we had to take the course again in summer school (and pass) to receive our high school diploma. This class was taught by one teacher who all students referred to as "The B*tch"--a nickname she pretty much owned (although not publicly), and not a term as common as it is now. You can figure out who taught the class in summer school.

My guess is that when she died, a lot of students went to the funeral just to make sure.

But we learned!

Maybe we need to start a "But We Learned!" thread. :)

[fishbrains]

Anyway, I had a vent:

The primary purpose of my course syllabus is not to welcome students to the course. The main purposes of my syllabi are to 1) Articulate policies as clearly as possible so we are all on the same page in order to 2) Protect myself from the small percentage of students who are sociopaths so that 3) Administrators can't throw me under the bus when these students complain.

This entire training on a "friendly syllabus" was just silly.

[AvidReader]

I also recently had training about my syllabus, but mine was training for making it accessible. I am all for accessibility. A lot of the training was very useful. I know, for instance, not to use multiple tabs to align information and to be careful with tables because it is hard for students to find information in a table if the students use screen readers. Fine.

Accessibility instructor: Screen readers don't indicate colors, highlighting, bold type, or underlining. They only recognize italics. You may only use italics in your syllabus.

Now, I'm happy to use italics for emphasis, but the departmental syllabus font barely distinguishes between italic and upright text (the slant is maybe 3%), so I initially put the important facts in bold and italic. But this is apparently forbidden and inappropriate because screen readers can't see bold, and even using bold--you know, for me and the sighted students who struggle to distinguish between upright and italic in the set font, especially at size 10--would be "noninclusive." Why is both not okay???

AR.

[lilyb]

This entire training on a "friendly syllabus" was just silly.

Our training was on the "hospitable" syllabus. Extended use of this metaphor made me think that someone's confused teaching college students with managing a Westin.

Accessibility or clarity, or fairness, though--that's all good.

[marshwiggle]

This entire training on a "friendly syllabus" was just silly.

Our training was on the "hospitable" syllabus. Extended use of this metaphor made me think that someone's confused teaching college students with managing a Westin.

Accessibility or clarity, or fairness, though--that's all good.

Seriously, was there ever a student who actually carefully read through a syllabus, and referred to it regularly during a course?