Rock Solid
Kumon Math and Reading Center
Monument
491 W. Highway 105, 80132
719-551-5575
http://www.kumon.com/monument
A monthly newsletter from
Kumon of Monument
by Tim Cerniglia (aka “Mr. C”)
Center Director
(click to follow link)
OMG
Language is a fascinating thing. It changes, evolves, adapts, adopts, clarifies,
obscures, empowers, destroys, lies and affirms. Over the last 15-20 years, our
language has been experiencing a tumultuous tide of change wrought by the
information age. Our poor, tired, thumbs straining at the limitations of analog
phones begged us for relief. “Four 7’s to make an ‘S’? Are you kidding me!?”
And so was born the text/chat abbreviation. Webopedia lists upwards of 1,400 of
these, from the ubiquitous “LOL” to the surreptitious “PAW” (parents are
watching). Time Magazine helpfully lists 92 commonly used abbreviations
employed by young people today. Having spent the last 10 minutes scrolling
through them, it does give me pause to wonder just how far the language has
fallen. By way of comparison, it is often illuminating to read the simple letters
sent home by soldiers during the Civil War, or World War II, and then wonder,
“Can…or would…our young people today be able to write so wonderfully?” Not
in 140 characters! (Twitter) The language has been clipped, chopped, diced, and
sliced. That’s not to say our language today is utterly dead, nor that our literature
today is of a lesser light. But rather, how we think of language, how we use it, and
the time we are willing to devote to it…is growing slight. Over on the right side
of this newsletter is a study that most college students aren’t reading above the 7 th
grade level (Kumon Level G!). This is not surprising, since the average American
reads at about the 7th grade level. For example, the Harry Potter series ranges
from 5th grade (first book) to 7th grade (final book).
Can we aspire to more? Many do, and I’ve been honored to call them students
of mine. In 2014, we had three students complete the entire Kumon Reading
program which is 12th Grade+ reading…yet most of these students are 14 years
old. Is their journey over? Of course not! Are they well prepared for the difficult
challenges ahead? Are they able to earn their way into advanced literature classes
in school? Do they find all subjects from English to History to Science to Math
just plain easier to get through? You bet they do. If you’re used to studying
literature at a 12th grade level, how hard is it to break down a history assignment in
a book written for 6th graders? Not very hard. And it’s a quick process too, since
these kids are also used to working at a higher pace, and concentrating for 45-55
minutes in a single assignment. In 2015, we’ll have 3-4 more program graduates.
And that’s not the only language students are learning here. Math is, as
someone once said, “The language of the universe.” It has its own vocabulary,
rules, structure, syntax, logic, and symbols; many of which map right back to
English. The word ‘is’ in math is represented by the = sign. When I ask them
what = means, most students will say, “The answer” or “The next step.” But =
means so much more than this! It means “exactly the same”, and is a symbol for
balance, how very Zen. It’s the tiniest little symbol, but to really understand math,
you need to know what it means. English has it’s symbols (“.?!,’*) which group,
compare and operate on the language. Math does too (x, ÷, ±, ʃ). And they both
have a symbolic alphabet to master (ABC and 123). In English, we think of
deduction (e.g. “Sherlock Holmes”) as a critical thinking skill. In math, deduction
is a mathematical proof. Students do not realize it, but a simple long division
problem like 35 346 is an exercise in deductive reasoning; a critical skill for
algebra and it’s many language rules. I think this is why so many people struggle
with math education. The way the schools teach it completely misses the point.
We’re not teaching a random set of skills based on some arbitrary school calendar.
We’re teaching a language called mathematics. Students who cannot speak or
study in that language by about 5th grade perform poorly in middle school and high
school, and doors that are open to other students are locked for them. Reading too,
but the results can be even scarier!
Parents, especially those new to Kumon (<6 months), sometimes struggle to
understand its value. Often, they’re looking at it through the lens of their child’s
daily homework. If you really want to understand what Kumon is about, look at
the work of the students above level G (math and reading) on the 100%
board…many are 5th-7th graders. Imagine speaking a language that most people
cannot speak (math), and reading at levels higher than 70-80% of adults. OMG!
January 2015
Important Upcoming Center Dates
• Kumon Closed: Jan 19th for Martin Luther King Day (no assignment or class
that day) Students will receive work for the weekend. Classes resume Jan 21 st.
• Grading Coaching: Want to improve your home grading to get the most value
out of your Kumon dollars? Free opportunity – see Mr. C in class.
Kumon Class Reminders
• As we continue to grow here at Kumon it can get quite noisy in the lobby. Be
mindful that students are studying in the classroom. Please take conversations
and rambunctious siblings outside.
• Home grading is an essential element of the Kumon Method of Learning.
Students learn more, retain more and progress faster when their work is
graded and corrected each day. Kumon students also respect their parents
who participate in the process each day.
• Absent unexpectedly? Please pick up assignments the next business day, or
send Mr. C an email if you will not be picking up.
• When was the last time you met with Mr. C to discuss your student’s
progress? Consider setting up an appointment.
Food for Thought
“We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school,
the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your
fault, because if you wanted to change you're the one who has got to change.”
- Katherine Hepburn, American Actor (1907-2003)
CampusReform.org: Average College Freshman Reads at 7th Grade Level
The average U.S. college freshman reads at a seventh grade level, according to
an educational assessment report. “We are spending billions of dollars trying to
send students to college and maintain them there when, on average, they read at
about the grade 6 or 7 level, according to Renaissance Learning’s latest report on
what American students in grades 9-12 read, whether assigned or chosen,”
education expert Dr. Sandra Stotsky told Breitbart Texas.
Stotsky, a Professor Emerita at the University of Arkansas, served on the
Common Core Validation Committee in 2009-10, during which she called the
standards “inferior.” She claimed the Common Core left out standards needed to
prepare students for STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) careers.
“The average reading level for five of the top seven books assigned as summer
reading by 341 colleges using Renaissance Learning’s readability formula was
rated 7.56 [i.e halfway through seventh grade],” Stotsky told Breitbart Texas.
The study also found that most high school graduates don’t study mathematics
much past eighth-grade compared to students in other high-achieving countries.
In addition, the lack of difficulty and complexity found in high school reading
material is indicative of what colleges can assign to students once they enter
higher education and professors aren’t requiring incoming students read at a
college level. “Nor are [colleges] sending a signal to the nation’s high schools
that high school level reading is needed for college readiness,” said Stotsky.
“Indeed, they seem to be suggesting that a middle school level of reading is
satisfactory, even though most college textbooks and adult literary works written
before 1970 require mature reading skills.”
Stotsky claims that reading development starts in elementary school and
acknowledges the importance of student reading outside the classroom. She adds
that despite societal changes over the past 100 years, both male and female
students have continued to read the same type of material. Girls tend to gravitate
towards books about relationships and animals, while boys enjoy adventure
stories, military exploits, superheroes, and historical nonfiction. “For almost 100
years, there have been many surveys in this country of what children prefer to
read. Despite changes in immigration patterns, family literacy, and cultural
influences, what [they] read has been relatively stable,” said Stotsky.
According to Breitbart Texas, Stotsky is credited with creating the strongest
set of k-12 academic standards in the country while working for the
Massachusetts Department of Education, and is responsible for developing
licensure tests for prospective teachers.
The Algebra Problem - How to elicit algebraic thinking in students before eighth
grade, By Laura Pappano, Harvard Graduate School of Education
It’s Crazy Hair Day at Marshall Elementary School in Boston’s Dorchester
neighborhood—which is perfect, because Tufts University researcher Bárbara
Brizuela has brought a hat. In the stovepipe style and made from oaktag paper,
the hat is one foot tall. Brizuela then asks, “If I’m five and a half feet tall, how tall
will I be with the hat on?” Second-grader Jasmine, smiley in a pink sweatsuit,
answers, “Six and a half feet.” Rather than say, “Right!” Brizuela offers another
question: “How do you know?”
Thus begins a math conversation that researchers like Brizuela believe may
hold the key to tackling one of our biggest school bugaboos: algebra. As they
talk, Jasmine uses words, bar graphs, and a table to describe how tall each
person they discuss will be if they put on the hat. Jasmine creates a rule—“add
one foot to the number you already had”, and applies it to a person 100 feet tall.
Brizuela even throws out a variable. “So, to show someone whose height I
don’t know, I will use z feet,” she says, adding a z to Jasmine’s table. “What
should I do now?” Jasmine pauses. “This is kind of hard,” she says. Brizuela,
whose pilot study explores mathematical thinking among children in grades K–2,
understands. “Would you like to use a different letter?” she asks, erasing the z
and replacing it with a y. Jasmine smiles. She picks up her pencil and easily jots
down the rule: y + 1 = z feet.
It may seem adorable that young children are stumped if asked to add 1 to z
but not if asked to add 1 to y, but to Brizuela, director of the Mathematics,
Science, Technology, and Engineering Education Program in Tuft’s education
department, it reveals the reasoning capacity of young minds and the need to
engage them in algebraic thinking long before it becomes a dreaded subject. […]
Back in the early 1980s, one-quarter of high school graduates never even took
algebra, says Daniel Chazen, director of the Center for Mathematics Education at
the University of Maryland. Today, educators are pushing students to take
algebra even before high school. According to the National Assessment of
Educational Progress (NAEP), the number of students taking Algebra I in eighth
grade more than doubled between 1986 and 2011, from 16 to 34 %. Strikingly,
eighth-grade NAEP math test scores have edged up too, with 43 % scoring
advanced or proficient in 2011, compared with 27 % in 1996.
But amid the good news is a troubling reality: Many kids are failing algebra. In
California, where standards call for Algebra I in grade 8, a 2011 EdSource report
shows that nearly one-third of those who took the course—or 80,000 students—
scored “below basic” or “far below basic.” In districts across the country, failure
rates for Algebra I vary but run as high as 40 or 50 %, raising questions about
how students are prepared—and how the subject is taught.
Why is algebra so hard? For many students, math experts say, it is a dramatic
leap to go from the concrete world of computation-focused grade school math
to the abstract world of algebra, which requires work with variables and
changing quantitative relationships. It is not just the shock of seeing letters
where numbers have been but also the type of thinking those letters represent.
“In arithmetic, you are dealing with explicit numbers,” says Hung-Hsi Wu, a
professor emeritus of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.
“Algebra says, ‘I have a number; I don’t know what it is, but three times it and
subtract three is 15.’ You have a number floating out there, and you have to
catch it. It is the thinking behind catching the number that baffles students.”
While some argue that children must be developmentally ready to learn
algebra—around ages 11–13, when they can grasp abstract thought—Brizuela
and others say it’s critical to introduce it earlier. “Kids need to develop some
comfort with these tools,” she says. “Babies are exposed to written and spoken
language, and after six years we expect them to become somewhat fluent with
that. In math, we just drop it on them like a bomb.” […]
In a study to be published in October in Recherches en Didactique des
Mathématiques, a French math education journal, Brizuela and her colleagues
tracked 19 students in Boston Public Schools in grades 3, 4, and 5 who received
weekly algebra lessons plus homework, as compared with a control group, and
followed them through middle school. Results showed that those students
outperformed their peers on algebra assessments given in grades 5, 7, and 8 and
drawn from NAEP, Massachusetts state tests, and the Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMMS.
Central to Brizuela’s work is a striking idea: Rather than pushing eighth-grade
or high school algebra down to elementary school, she begins with what
children already tend to do, such as generalizing. For example, when children
hear the word “hundred,” they know to add two zeros. Brizuela uses that
natural ability to lure children into thinking about quantitative relationships that
then become algebraic rules. This exercises their natural mathematical
reasoning, which is often pushed aside in favor of getting the “right” answer or
learning to memorize or compute. Here are three things that teachers can do to
encourage algebraic thinking, according to researchers:
• Broaden your definition of the equal sign. Children should be trained to view
an equal sign (=) as balancing an equation, not as a command to produce an
answer, says Cathy L. Seeley, a senior fellow at the Charles A. Dana Center at the
University of Texas at Austin. “If you help them be fluid with what the equal sign
is, it starts helping children to grasp algebra.”
• Introduce letters, carefully. Including letters in math problems early on can
help children grow comfortable with seeing and working with them, but they
can also be misleading. Some young children can correlate a letter with its order
in the alphabet, like a (first) or z (last). […]
• Talk about math. So much of grade school math is “what you do with paper,”
but paper work is typically about computation and answers, not mathematical
reasoning, says former math teacher Paul Goldenberg of the Educational
Development Center in Waltham, Mass. Presenting problems orally and framing
them as a continuation of earlier ideas, rather than a “frightening new
language,” can help, he says. […]
“In starting with children at six, rather than starting with numbers, we ask,
‘How do you know if you have more than somebody else or less?’” says
Dougherty. She and her colleagues use measurement as a vehicle for discussing
comparisons of, say, the height of a cereal box to the length of a pencil. Then,
instead of writing down “the height of the cereal box” and “the length of the
pencil,” she says, “we’ll say, ‘Let b represent the height of the cereal box and l
be the length of the pencil.’ It sounds pretty simple, but it is actually pretty
powerful.” Dougherty, who has been following a cohort of students at the
University Laboratory School in Honolulu, Hawaii, since 2001, says that by the
time the students reach high school, they consistently outperform peers in their
understanding of algebraic concepts like quantitative relationships. […]
Teacher Maria DaSilva has students measure out liquid “doses” to “feed”
growing shrimp by marking on masking tape placed along the side of a
container. Later, she removes the tape and places it horizontally on a piece of
paper to become a number line. This exercise gets students thinking about
changing variables as opposed to fixed amounts and demonstrates that
between whole units there exist partial units—or fractions—which experts say is
absolutely critical to understanding and solving algebraic equations. A common
reason students get tripped up in algebra is that they don’t understand what
fractions really represent and how to manipulate them, experts say.
The drive to improve U.S. math performance among students has focused on
two main worries: (1) Are students well enough prepared, and (2) are teachers
prepared enough to teach math well?
William Schmidt, professor and co-director of the Education Policy Center at
Michigan State University, says the new Common Core standards likely to be
adopted by most states for 2013–2014, “capture the logic of mathematics,”—an
upgrade from the seemingly unrelated lessons that have made learning math
“like reading the phone book.”
But he wonders: Will teachers be able to teach it? In a 2010 study, Breaking
the Cycle: An International Comparison of U.S. Mathematics Teacher
Preparation, comparing U.S. primary and middle school teachers with peers in
16 countries, Schmidt and his colleagues found that American teachers had
“weak training mathematically” and less math coursework than teachers in highperforming nations. “We have this new demanding curriculum in the middle
grades and teachers who are ill prepared to teach it,” he warns.
Meanwhile, excitement over raised standards has been met with a worry:
What about the kids who are struggling now? Math researchers, like James J.
Lynn at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with colleagues in New York and
Seattle, are in the third year of a four-year National Science Foundation–funded
project to study 17,000 high school students who struggle with algebra. Their
approach is to promote sense-making, which they say has been lacking in many
students’ earlier algebra experiences.
Along with work aimed at bolstering students’ sense of how quantities
relate—including filling deficits as they go rather than undertaking long periods
of “re-teaching”—the project also seeks to change the mindset around algebra.
Instead of viewing algebra as insurmountable, students learn that applying
effort and wrestling with problems can grow brain connections and make them
smarter and better at math. “We try to shape their attitudes of themselves as
capable learners,” says Lynn. The program is showing some gain, with about half
the students scoring “high mastery” after the course (most students scored “low
mastery” prior to the course).
Given such difficulty, one has to wonder: Why even learn algebra? According
to Jon R. Star, associate professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,
that’s like asking: “Why are they reading Wuthering Heights?” Star says the
answer is that—like literature—algebra tells us something about human nature
and understanding. Algebra, he says, “is our students’ first exposure to what
mathematics is.” It offers students the sort of critical thinking about
mathematical ideas that simply doesn’t come with the computation skills of
early school math. Instead, he argues, we should simply point out that, when we
get to algebra, “we are here to learn some mathematics.” Not computation. Not
calculation. But real math.
Instructor’s note: Article redacted where indicated […]. Original found HERE.
Note that “many students” are in
the slow lane, and “few
students” are in the fast lane.
Notice how by 4th grade, TCA is already
developing two tracks, and that there are
essentially three by 8th grade
Very few students are
allowed to jump tracks.
Track jumping basically ends
before 8th grade.
Because of a decision that happened all the way back in 4th
grade, Mr. C’s daughter wound up taking a summer school
class to force TCA to allow her to take Geometry in 8th grade.
She is now on the track she belongs.
All schools do this in one form or another. Many have charts
like these which you can get if you are persistent.
Look at the massive
difference in available
courses by the time
students reach their senior
year if a student takes
“course 2” in 8th grade vs.
Geometry in 8th grade.
Track jumping basically
ends before 8th grade.
Once you’re in a track, it
is hard to escape it.