Streaming by Student Cooperation
The student right to a good education ends where he or she disturbs the
education of others. The students right to good education also requires
course materials to be clear and readable to allow self-instruction and
also requires instructors versed in mathematics to teach the latter.
Anything less may be grounds for student alienation, lack of
cooperation included, and parental protest. This essay on streaming
students by cooperation is premised on the notion that course design
and delivery is sound. I have seen situations where both course design
and delivery are unsound, and students are brow-beaten by teachers and
school counsellors to behave. Bullying in schools is not limited to
students.
Discipline When Education is Inclusive
Some school are able to expel difficult students. But many other schools or
school boards cannot expel difficult students. Where that
occurs there is still a possibility of providing quieter and better
schooling. Let students level of cooperation with their teachers decide
in which classes students are placed - make access to some classes
conditional on good behavior and on cooperating with the instructor.
How does one in general provide teachers with easier classroom management
in public secondary schools and at the same time provide a better and
safer school environment for most students? One answer is Let the
student decide. Let the classes or streams in which they are placed
depend on their cooperation with instruction and perhaps on their
abilities. With students who cooperate, teachers may be able to provide
multilevel instruction - not a simple task - by enlisting more advanced
students to aid and tutor struggling students. Students who cooperate may
be placed in larger classes where teacher subject knowledge is more important
than classroom management skills. Non-cooperative students may be placed into
smaller classes.
Imagine an instructor Henderson with a subject expertise in say chemistry
or physics, and great talent for skill and concept development there-in.
In the school, the principal should be able to tell students, Henderson
is a great teacher but to be Henderson’s classroom you have to co-operate
and be well behaved. Otherwise, you will be expelled from that class and
put somewhere else. Then student in Henderson class will have a good
learning environment and a chance to sit down and study. The chance to be
in such an environment in physics or mathematics or another subject may
drive students to be well behaved. No force is involved.
The stark message that student will be streamed not by academic success,
but according to their classroom behavior, could lead - a hope
not a guarantee - for classrooms where learning and not agitation
is the main objective. Student will wanting to stay in such classes or be
promoted to them will have incentive to behave. The otherwise boisterous
student who wants to learn may then decide to control his or her
behaviour alone or with advice from the school or parents. Thus firm
limits and natural consequence of lack of cooperation are set. It is cruel
to be kind. Give students responsibility.
The introduction of such streaming may take a few months or years, but as it
proceeds students will strive and their parents will lobby for access to
the stream noted for student co-operation in their own instruction.
Mixing Large Group and Small Group Instruction
Students who decide to behave may be placed in larger groups as classroom
management is less difficult with them. That re-grouping could release
teachers for the small group instruction of the difficult students. We
hope that latter are not deliberately difficult to have small group
instruction. No scheme is perfect. The instruction of that small group
may have to be shared between those teachers able to manage difficult
students. Each teacher is different. There is no need to insist all
instructors who works well with cooperative students have the ability to
work with the difficult ones at the start of a teaching career.
The onset of teenage years or puberty is a time of
unsettling changes for students in which rationality may not always be
present. The teen that is difficult today may become more responsible
over time. The growing teen is not on drugs, he or she is on hormones
whose effects are unpredictable and whose effects will hopefully reduce
over time, so that growing maturity is seen.
In this matter, there will be invariably students who are difficult, who
do not see the point of being in school or lack self-control. That is
where small group instruction and guidance counselors may help. Leaves from
education to work or not, to see need for self-application may provide the
motivation and self-control needed for a student to cooperate in
their own education.
A student who is difficult, there is always hope, may decide later to
settle down in order to have the fruits of a safer learning
environment. The hope in the foregoing is that students will decide to
behave.
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Secondary
Mathematics for Ages 11+, A Practical Approach for home-tutoring or -schooling, or for schools & colleges
with local curriculum control. Study how to include site content - its skill development how-TOs and innovations
into present or future lesson plans - some reading required.
Road
Safety Messages and Questions: When and why should you face
traffic when walking along a road or cycle path? Is it a good
idea to hang limbs outside of cars etc? What gives more
protection in a crash: a car, motorbike or bicycle?
See too, the BBC-Belgium story Texting and
Driving - texting & the impossible test - the article links to a gruesome utube video on the subject
The Logic of Injustice:
How Texas sent
an innocent man to his death - The wrong Carlos. Some judgments are irreversible. Procescution: Where and when prosectors play to win rather than for
justice, guilt beyond a reasonable doubt goes unrespected due to prosecutors who putting winning
first, those innocence before the law may be convicted. Some procescutors offices in continuing to accuse after a pardon
due to reasonable doubt or innocent being shown, may sucessfully oppose compensaton for false convictions
by asserting a pardon individual is still under suspicion. Then the pardoned individual or the latter's estate
is not compensation for years or decade
of improper or false imprisonment, or for execution. Site chapters on Logic
and some in Pattern
Based Reason may slowly lead to greater precision in reading, applying and
writing laws.
May 2012, Composition Starting:
Pre-School and Primary Mathematics - Quantitative Skills, An
Intellectual View, Feedback Welcome:
The 8 Most Popular Site Inlinks
Parent Center: Help your child or teen
learn:
Parent-friendly
Work Booklets for ages 3+ to 13 Use these or others to check
or build skills. Other booklets are available but these booklets
allow parents unsure of themselves in mathematics to help their
children. The selection acquired in Canada is published in the
USA. So it has a US orientation. In retrospect, the selection
shows parents what to check with the booklets or by other ways,
the choice is theirs. But in retrospect, the selection does not
cover integral and fractions liquid weights and measures - ask
the publishers to correct that! For ages 9 to 12 say, parents may
compensate by showing boys and girls how to use weights or mass,
and further measures in food preparation. Beyond that children
may be shown how to measure and calculate angles, lengths and
areas [proportional amounts too] directly or by using maps and
plans drawns to scale. Learning how to gather and measure all the
ingredients, pots and pans for a dish or a meal, along with
cleaning up sets the stage for like activities or experiments in
science courses, and in developing organizational skills,
gives boys and girls a head start. Good luck. At the other
extreme, more comprehensive than light, if your motto is
McCainian: drill, drill, drill then Toronto
mathematician and actor John Mighton's jump math organization has jump math
workbooks for at least grades 3 to 8 for at-home and in-school
use - training sessions for teachers available. Jump math has
been expanding to cover older students. Jump Math Samples: plus
Fractions for
Grades 3-4 & Grades 5-6 [Read] Free Resources grades 1 to 8
[unread - likely to be good]. and
Mathematics
Skills For Ages 3 to 14 - technical!
Skills with take
home value - A few ideas
Basic skills include
time-date-calendar Matters; money matters; map, plan and
scale diagram matters;counting, measuring and figuring;
decision making with logic and likelyhood; being careful and
being aware of the domino effect of mistakes; reading and
writing with precision.
Is your child able to add, subtract and multiply amounts
of money, work with fractions, work with clocks and calendars,
work with maps and plans, and measure length, weight-mass and
volume? Schools may promote your son or daughter without
providing basic skills in reading, writing and
arithmetic.
Arithmetic
and Number Theory Skills
Algebra
Starter Lessons
Geometry
- maps plans trigonometry vectors
More
Algebra
70
Calculus Starter Lessons
Calculus Lessons Elsewhere:
-
How to Ace Calculus: Street Wise Guide - Mostly
Text.
-
Flash
Video for Calculus Phobics
They cover basic topics in ways likely to complement your
notes, your textbooks and site material. When Goldilocks
trespassed in the house of the three bears, she found three bowls
of porridge, two not to her liking, and one just right. Different
bears have different tastes. As invited guest here and elsewhere,
if one or more explanations is not to liking, try another. It may
be better or just right.
Unsolicited Advice
Learning to do and high marks if it comes to easy is often
deceptive - light rather than deep. For that reason, students
with learning difficulties determined not to let it get in their
way may go deeper and farther than those with none. High marks,
if the come easy, may be deceptive - provide a too light and not
a deep mastery. That could have been your problem in secondary
school, one that leads to comprehension shock or difficulties in
calculus and more generally in the first year of college. Bon
Appetite.
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