Learn Me Gooder by Pearson John

Author:Pearson, John [Pearson, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2011-08-21T22:00:00+00:00

Arlen Globetrotter

Date: Friday, January 15, 2010

To: Fred Bommerson

From: Jack Woodson

Subject: Houston, we have a word problem

Hey dude,

I apologize for giving you such a sports overloaded email earlier this week. I sometimes forget what a sports weenie you are, and that even athletes’ nicknames tend to confuse you. Though it’s certainly entertaining for the rest of us when you talk about Michael “The Refrigerator” Jordan, Alex “Air” Rodriguez, and Wayne “Too Tall” Gretzky.

But let’s move away from sports.

Earlier this week, Miss Gellar, a special ed teacher, approached me in the hall and asked if I had a boy named Maurice in my class. She told me that she thought he might be responsible for some graffiti out on the playground, as some writing with his name on it had been found on the inside of one of the tube slides.

I told her that none of my kids ever write their names on anything, so it was probably the Maurice in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s class. I did ask what he had written, though. I was fully expecting to hear that he had spelled “F-U-K” or “B-I-C-H-T.” Instead, Miss Gellar said the graffiti read, “Maurice has 25 hot wheels cars. His friend has 19 hot wheels cars. How many cars in all?”

Maurice is a math graffiti artist! SCORE!! Just kidding, nobody should be defacing school property. But hey, if you’ve got to write something onto the side of a public façade, why not make it something that is likely to stimulate brain cells?

Since we’ve been back from vacation, we’ve been focusing pretty hard on word problems. Maurice’s example notwithstanding, this has proven to have many “problems” of its own.

Most word problems follow some sort of logical path. Most third graders do not. So while it might make perfect sense to you or me that if somebody gives away five pencils, they should then have LESS pencils than they started with – prompting subtraction – that’s not always the way it works out.

Usually, when we walk through a problem together out loud in a class discussion, logic prevails. The kids, even the low ones, can tell me when they should add and when they should subtract. The problem arises when the kids face the questions on their own. The main issue being that many of the kids don’t actually read the problem or think about what the words mean.

Did you ever see that Far Side cartoon captioned, “What dogs hear?” The human says, “Spot, fetch my slippers! Good boy, Spot, that’s a good boy, Spot!” and the dog hears, “Spot, blah blah blah blah blah, Spot, blah blah blah blah Spot!”

Gary Larson could do a similar cartoon called, “What kids read.”

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