Drills

Drilling in math is fun. At least, it was for me in elementary school. I keep coming across the idea that "drill is kill"; I've seen it so much that I have almost started to believe it. But then I think back to what I remember about elementary school math. In 6 years of math (kindergarten was not so academic way back then...), I have only four memories of what I did in math:

1) In 2nd grade, we made little colored picture cards with the times tables on them. For instance, all the "two times" would be pink pencils, "three times" yellow bears, and so forth. We used the cards to practice our times tables.
2) In 2nd grade, we wrote all the numbers up to 1000 in a book made of ten sheets with a grid for 100 numbers on each sheet.
3) In 6th grade, we did timed drills on arithmetic. I thoroughly enjoyed the competition with myself and my classmates to accurately recall and write the answers in these one-minute drills. Probably because I usually did very well. :)
4) When we learned to calculate interest, I was proud of being able to calculate and show my work for ten consecutive years of compound interest all on one line of paper; I don't think the teacher appreciated my itty-bitty writing.

Why did I enjoy, or at least remember, only repetitive activities? Aren't repetitive activities supposed to be mind-numbing? (As an adult, I do find repetitive activities boring, but children aren't just little adults.) There's not a constructivist, "fuzzy math" activity up there, although I suppose you could still find elementary school children today counting up to 1000 jelly beans in a group at some point in their schooling. Imagine my surprise to read today that editors of The Mathematics Teacher, in refusing a paper for publication, stated that "rote drills do not constitute an authentic mathematical practice". Apparently, I didn't actually do math in elementary school. Funny, I ended up a top math student in high school (the kind that went to state contests) and earned a BS in mathematics. All that "inauthentic" math practice back in elementary school gave me a good foundation for mathematical achievement later on. Remembering my own past, while anecdotal and not likely to convince any true believer in the stultifying effects of math drills, helps me be more firm in my resolve to give my children the kind of math foundation I received. I bet in a few years they'll beat me on timed drill contests!

New in Town

We recently watched the movie New in Town starring Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr. It had some funny moments, and Harry Connick Jr. was handsome. HOWEVER, why didn't they film it in Minnesota?? The movie is full of Minnesota jokes and references to New Ulm events and structures, yet the movie was filmed in Canada. We never see New Ulm! A city with its own unique German heritage and a tourist destination in its own right! Lame.

This film is a caricature of Minnesota cliches; it's like the movie makers were trying to turn Fargo into a "rom-com", leaving out most of the senseless violence. The so-called Minnesota accent was overdone. I'm married to a Minnesotan and have lived in and visited that lovely, sometimes very cold state; people in the Twin Cities area, at least, don't speak with the strong accent this movie had them using. And while scrapbooking may be popular there, I can't imagine a Minnesota woman pulling out her scrapbook and showing each page thereof to her new boss right off as her boss drives at night on unfamiliar, snowy roads.

More on the previous post

OK, I'll be fair. I just delved into the study report itself (posted by the author here) and saw what the actual reading remediation programs were. The programs were Corrective Reading, Wilson Learning System, Spell Read Phonological Auditory Training, and Failure Free Reading (smallest sample group in the study). Per the authors, "All of these programs provided systematic and explicit instruction in word-level decoding skills. Failure Free Reading focuses on developing recognition of words by sight, while the other three programs emphasize phonemic decoding." So, one of the four remediation programs used was not phonics; but, it wasn't whole language, either!

What's interesting to me is that Failure Free Reading, while emphasizing decoding at the word level and eschewing phonics, apparently brought about an improvement in phonological decoding skills in this study. What mechanism makes that happen? I'd love to see the curriculum itself to see how it facilitates development of phonological decoding ability.

Another thing phonics can do...

I'm an unabashed fan of phonics instruction to teach reading. Not very odd, considering we have a phonetic system of writing, but still viewed as reactionary and less effective in some circles. I'm not sure what drug exactly people in those circles used to fry their brains while their parents were paying for tuition (I'm including alcohol as a drug here--I live near a college, and I'm no stranger to what goes on substance-wise), for synthetic phonics appears to be the most logical and successful way of teaching English reading, despite all of English's lovely archaic spellings and foreign words.

While perusing science news this morning at one of those odd hours I owe to my six-week-old, I came across an article stating that reading remediation positively alters brains:

As the researchers report today in the journal Neuron, brain imaging of children between the ages of 8 and 10 showed that the quality of white matter -- the brain tissue that carries signals between areas of grey matter, where information is processed -- improved substantially after the children received 100 hours of remedial training. After the training, imaging indicated that the capability of the white matter to transmit signals efficiently had increased, and testing showed the children could read better.
....
Keller and Just also found that the amount of change in diffusion among the treated group was directly related to the amount of increase in phonological decoding ability. The children who showed the most white matter change also showed the most improvement in reading ability, confirming the link between the brain tissue alteration and reading progress.

Did you catch that? The kids got better at phonological decoding, and their brain tissue improved in quality. So, not only will phonics help a child read, but it makes his or her brain better! That's cool. :)

Whew!

It's official. My brother is still a punk. He is not even dating anyone, much less engaged.

Facebook Fun

My punk baby brother (OK, he's actually about 24 years old and studying engineering at BYU) just posted on Facebook that he's engaged! What??? I didn't even know he was dating anyone all that seriously. If this is for real, I'm in shock. But, knowing him, I will continue to suspect a hoax until he confirms the news personally. This is the boy who bleached his hair right before I got married and proclaimed to anyone who would listen that I was going to get so mad at him for ruining my wedding pictures with his crazy hair. I didn't get mad; I had more important things on my mind than the trivial detail of his hair color....things like, was I going to go through with the wedding?

MacGyver quote

Recently viewed quote on MacGyver: "I died...and went to Thanksgiving?" (upon waking up injured in a room full of Amish people).

I love that show. :)

I just discovered a new educational resource

Instead of searching randomly on the internet for free educational games, I can start my search with a great website I just discovered: Internet4Classrooms. The makers of this site have gathered together links for a large number of online educational games and put them in categories based on grade level standards covering kindergarten through eighth grade. For example, this link takes one to a list of links to games that deal with colors (under the subject of math) for kindergartners. I look forward to exploring this website some more!

Baby blessing

Today my husband gave our new baby a name and a blessing in church (see this link for an explanation of how that is done in the LDS church). It was a beautiful day, made even better by the presence of many relatives who sacrificed to travel in the snow and be a part of the event. Families are wonderful...when they're wonderful. ;)

Nursing benefits

This study is good news for nursing mothers.

The Season

It pains me to give a bad review of a new author's first book, but I just read part of an unbelievable, poorly researched young adult fiction book. It was Sarah MacLean's The Season, a teenage Regency romance set in 1815 at the start of the London season. The lead female and her two friends, all of whom are just 17 years old, speak like modern teenagers about finding "The One" and wanting love matches with someone who will treat them as equals. Equality as a pressing concern for gentry teenage girls in 1815? Come on! Here's one of the worst quotes I came across:

"True," said Ella. "Men are not nearly as evolved as women are, nor as intelligent, evidently."

So...not only is the author having a swipe at all men, she's oblivious to the fact that the theory of evolution didn't even come into being until after Darwin began his voyaging in 1831. Don't waste your time on this book.

Recent obsession

My children just discovered new sections of the UpToTen website a week ago, and they are in love. Every day, hours spent doing mazes, coloring pages, watching little cartoon sequences, and singing new songs for the older dds; all the while, I spend time holding and caring for the wee bairn. I'm quite pleased with the current arrangement, especially since dd5's reading skills seem to be growing due to self-motivation (she wants to navigate the site and do the activities all on her own).

Formula vs. Breast Milk

Does any brand of formula have stem cells in it? Doubt it. But breast milk does!

Celebrity LOL

In honor of our having watched the final episode of the final season of MacGyver last night, here's a great Celebrity LOL -

see more Lol Celebs
It's nice in our work/status/money/stuff-obsessed culture to see a hero like MacGyver making the choice to quit his employment when family obligations come up.

Stories from People Around Us #1

We invited a friend from church to join us for Thanksgiving dinner. She is a single, older lady, intelligent but certainly not part of any sort of celebrity scene. As we were talking about Donny Osmond (go Donny for winning Dancing With the Stars at his age!), I told a story about a relative who was asked out by two Osmond brothers at around the same time and ended up at an Osmond family get-together on one of the dates. Tres awkward.

Our friend topped my tale by telling about how her mother dated Elvis Presley. For real. She went on five dates with Elvis back when he was in Shreveport, but decided not to pursue a longer relationship with him. According to our friend, her mom didn't want to be with someone who'd "always be prettier than she was."

Smiles

Our dd-zero is just three and a half weeks old, and she just gave us her first clearly real smiles a few minutes ago. So dear! At this Thanksgiving season, one of the things I am most thankful for is the privilege of being a mother. I know that life could have taken me other ways and that motherhood is not something that comes to all women, so I am humbled and grateful for the blessing of being able to raise my children.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

We just watched the DVD of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog last night. Dh had already seen this little gem on the internet when it came out, but this was my first time watching it. It was one of the funniest movies I've seen for a very long time. Included on the DVD was a musical commentary that was one of the silliest things I've heard for a very long time. One of the best actors in the movie was Bad Horse, the head of the Evil League of Evil. ;) No, seriously, the three leads were all terrific. Well done, Joss Whedon et al.

Library wishes

I love our local library system. So many books, videos, etc. that we can put on hold and check out and renew (online renewal is so great!). :) However, I have just a few wishes that would make the library experience even better:
1) I wish people would not let their children damage the children's section DVDs. Nearly every Backyardigans video I've ever checked out freezes at some point in the watching thereof, much to the dismay of our little ones.
2) I wish that people would return intact the multi-DVD sets. We just found out that there is a sixth DVD to the 2nd season of MacGyver; it wasn't there when we checked it out, but now that the library has noticed its absence, we might be the ones who end up being charged for its loss.
3) I wish I hadn't had to pay $4.50 to use a parking garage last night when I went to our downtown library, which is located right by a community college branch so all the free parking spots by the library were full.

Benny and Omar

Benny and Omar by Eoin Colfer was such a fun book! And if expat life in Africa is like expat life in Asia and South America, this was one of the most accurate depictions of it that I've ever come across. The book even taught me about Irish culture; for instance, now I know the word "eejit", and I have an inkling of what "hurling" is (it's a sport, not a stomach emptying). So, go read this book. Read it to your children, too, if they're eight or older.

Stuffed

I just finished reading the book Stuffed by Hank Cardello last night. It was an interesting read, especially the first part where he covers the economic reasons for why restaurants and packaged food makers make selling choices that are bad for consumer health, inter alia, combo meals, supersizing, and inertia as to ingredient changes. The author is very pessimistic about people's ability to choose to eat healthily, so he advocates in the latter part of his book the practice of "stealth health"--changing out unhealthy ingredients for healthier ones without telling consumers. I can see the merits in such an idea, but I don't agree with what he considers healthier alternatives. For instance, I distrust artificial sweeteners and never use them in my food, and I don't drink diet soda pop; I certainly don't want the food industry sneaking such sweeteners into my food. Also, I don't want to be fed oil that my body won't absorb; I did that once, and I was not pleased with how my body dealt with it. I'd much rather eat moderate amounts of butter, saturated fat that it is. Despite my dislike of "stealth health" as a solution to the obesity epidemic, I still recommend the book--at the least, it should help you have the strength to turn down the combo meal next time you're forced to get your lunch or dinner at a fast food joint.

MacGyver: Trail to Doomsday

We just watched MacGyver: Trail to Doomsday. I knew who one of the bad guys was from the start. This made-for-TV movie was too predictable and very slow-paced. It was as though they took a regular MacGyver episode and just STREEEETTTCHED it to add another 30 minutes or so. I actually went and washed dishes, I was that bored with the lack of action. So, watch it if you're a MacGyver fan, but have something else to do with your hands while you wait for the movie to get where it's going.

What an intelligent teenager can do with the right education

A sixteen-year old boy diving off Montenegro while on vacation discovered an ancient Greek or Roman temple submerged under the water. He recognized it as unlikely to be a natural rock formation because his dad is an archaeologist and had dragged him around to various ruins:

Michael said: “When I first swam out, I thought they were just rocks, as most people would, but then I noticed that they were cylindrical and knew that they couldn’t be natural, so I called my dad over.

“I’ve been dragged around a lot of ancient ruins, so if it hadn’t been for that I wouldn’t have looked twice.”

Can you imagine how good this is going to look on his college applications? "Accomplishments: Discovered ancient temple on summer vacation". Pretty hard to top that!

Back to normal life?

Dh's paternity leave ended today, but things aren't as hard to handle as I feared. Thanks to baby only waking up three times during the night and falling back asleep almost immediately, I got a decent amount of sleep. It's amazing what a difference being rested makes! Also, my two older girls are not dissatisfied with having to stay home today because they're both getting over illnesses and slept late themselves.

Not to sound like a whiner, but I've never taken care of a newborn and my own house before. Living abroad in poorer countries generally includes with it the financial ability to hire housekeepers, but this time I'm on my own. I'm very grateful for my little house right now. Who wants to vacuum a McMansion while recovering from childbirth and caring for a newborn?

Pink Brain, Blue Brain

I just finished reading Pink Brain, Blue Brain tonight, an interesting book about differences between boys and girls by neuroscientist Lise Eliot. This book appears to be a fairly comprehensive summary of what biological sex differences have been found and which sex stereotypes have not been shown to be based on any concrete biological differences. I recommend the book to any parent or teacher, but be warned that it does get a bit tedious by the end because the author keeps hammering on her core idea: men and women have some small biological differences with respect to some abilities (other than brute strength and childbearing functions, of course), but those differences are frequently magnified by cultural expectations and can likely be eliminated, at least partially, thanks to brain plasticity.

I do have one giant gripe with this book. The author repeats the tired, old refrain, "We need more women to go into engineering and computer science." Why? Why do we need more women to do that? Do we need more men to become beauty stylists and fashion models? Men and women just tend to have different likes and dislikes sometimes. I am so tired of hearing how horrible it is that women are systematically discouraged from pursuing scientific careers by outside forces because that doesn't jive with my experience at all. I earned a B.S. in Mathematics at a socially-conservative religious university (BYU) but always felt very supported by all my math and science professors. However, I decided after a few months of being a full-time computer programmer that I couldn't do that as a career. My reason was that I (an introvert, mind you) needed more interaction with people than the job entailed. My male coworkers seemed quite happy to spend 8 hours (and more, the crazies :0) every day just typing code and staring at a computer screen. Even though neuroscientists might not have found a biological basis for why men are more often happy to focus for hours and hours on a few lines of code or obscure technological problems while women are more likely to enjoy conversing for hours and hours about clothes and makeup (gack!) doesn't mean that these differences aren't real and powerful and due to internal preferences, not external forces. Let men and women go into the fields they want to, and stop trying to push individual women to enter certain labor pools in pursuit of a lopsided feminist ideal.

Reading progress in just a few minutes a day

Dd5 is progressing very well in reading. She often reads picture books to herself and her sister now, provided that I have read the books to her recently. Because she remembers the stories and many of the words used in them, she's able to work out nearly all of the words by applying the phonics rules we've covered so far. Not bad, considering we are just finishing up the "silent 'e' at the end of the word makes the vowel say its name" rule. Thanks to www.starfall.com, she has been given a solid foundation in knowing letter names and sounds; Starfall is one of the best websites ever.

Lessons are not stressful for either one of us. I especially love it that our formal reading lessons are nearly always under 10 minutes per day. A typical reading lesson can be as simple as sounding out twelve words or so that require application of a specific reading rule. If she's being fidgety, our lessons really are that short. Also, if need be, we spend weeks on the same rule until she understands it. It's not like we have to rush her to reading proficiency...she's barely old enough for kindergarten as it is! It's pleasant to be seeing fruits already from our low-key but consistent approach to teaching her to read.