This just seems WRONG.... Update, NOT so wrong!!!

[chris1gill]

OK,

Well I am updating my original message LOL... Anyone reading this knows the original story about DS & his science project... He lost around 40 points for his science project not being creative, and honestly I thought that was a bit unfair... This was a project (brochure) on the planet Pluto & the project was done in school with an assigned partner (in this case the partner would not use his research or his ideas & the teacher graciously allowed him to work on his own project at the last minute)...

ANYHOW, I have now seen the grading sheet showing all the deductions for not being creative, but now I have seen the actual written assignment....

Although I don't necessarily agree with assigning a creative writing project in science class, that's exactly what this project was!! In Several locations in the written assignment the word CREATIVE was used, it was clear that part of the grading was going to be on the creative ideas you had for "selling" a tourist on Pluto...

I guess if this was the assignment, we should have brought DS to a travel agency to see an actual travel brochure... but this was all done in school, not at home...

SO, that is the deal.... we are waiting to see if DS will be given any credit for his class presentation.... he says that he presented his brochure, but the teacher doesn't remember it....

From this point forward I have asked DS to bring home the assignments even if they are projects being done in school... this way I can see what he is working on in school & I can get a grip on whether it is something he can do without creative suggestion, or whether it is something that I need to give him some creative ideas....

So, thank you to everyone who let me vent... it's been an interesting discussion, and perhaps it will continue

 

[golfgal]

Partner projects should be outlawed unless 100% done IN school and the teacher closely monitoring the contributions of each child, i.e. each child picks a specific part of the project to do and does that part. No one should be forced to be graded on someone else's work. My twins always get stuck with the kids that won't help on anything because they are good students and THEY get stuck doing everything.

I would have a chat with the teacher and remind her that your son told her about the issues and tried to rectify the problem. If you get no where, this would be something I would bring to a principal.

 

[chris1gill]

Partner projects should be outlawed unless 100% done IN school and the teacher closely monitoring the contributions of each child, i.e. each child picks a specific part of the project to do and does that part. No one should be forced to be graded on someone else's work. My twins always get stuck with the kids that won't help on anything because they are good students and THEY get stuck doing everything.

I would have a chat with the teacher and remind her that your son told her about the issues and tried to rectify the problem. If you get no where, this would be something I would bring to a principal.

Golfgal, I couldn't agree more... I mean can you imagine he went from a project where his partner wouldn't listen or take his suggestions to just doing his own project because he had too much pride to have his name on a project he had no part in! He surely did not benefit from telling the teacher anything, now he's just got one of the lowest grades of his life and learned a lesson that I'd rather have never had him learn, but now I say fine, if that's the way this particular class is going to go, just play by her rules She really should be teaching art, not science.... we've had creative differences all year long, but this just put the icing on the cake... He's gone from an A to barely a C, and the problem is he knows all the facts, all the definitions, she just wants fluff & pretty stuff... He's a scientific kid, he doesn't want fluff or pretty stuff, he just wants the facts It's so unfortunate....

 

[MouseWorshipin]

There was a thread a while back about the new trend in math...guessing. I swear. They give the kids problems they couldn't possibly do at that level and have them guess at answers. This somehow prepares them to learn math.

For a short time, they had "creative spelling" where the little darlings were allowed to spell however they wanted. My son had it in first grade. It went away fast.

So, it doesn't strike me as odd that they want Science to be "Creative," too.

The schools, IMHO, are out of control with this "blind leading the blind" stuff. Having kids teach other, I mean. One of my boys wrote a paper about what he wants to do for a living (lawyer) and quoted my brother, who works for a firm called Jones Day. The kid who graded it took off points for capitalizing the name of the firm and for not saying Jones AND Day. The teacher didn't add them back in! I had to call the dang woman to get it fixed.

Whew! Felt gooood to get that off my chest! Thanks!

 

[doxdogy]

Creative spelling? Please tell me you are not serious? Can you tell I haven't had a child in school for 10 years? To the OP I don't blame you for being upset. Your son tries to do the right thing and it ends up costing him points on his grade.

For a short time, they had "creative spelling" where the little darlings were allowed to spell however they wanted. My son had it in first grade. It went away fast.

 

[kimmikayb]

I deal with this frustration too! I don't understand what these partnerships are suppose to teach the kids? To make up for the lack of another partner? My DD12 gets placed in groups where there is one kid who doesn't do her share. She just doesn't care. The other kids get the bad grade even tho they did their part. So in real life they must make up for their business partner's lack of ambition?

I just don't get it. I hope the teacher can give you some answers. Creativity in Science? Thought that was fairly cut and dry.

 

[MouseWorshipin]

Creative spelling? Please tell me you are not serious? Can you tell I haven't had a child in school for 10 years? To the OP I don't blame you for being upset. Your son tries to do the right thing and it ends up costing him points on his grade.

I kid you not. This was about 10 years ago. And it was a couple weeks ago that teachers on here were talking about the great idea of guessing at math answers.

The schools are never content anymore to teach. Everything has to be New, Exciting, Creative, Empowering, and Proactive. Oh, they learned a new word, it is catching on...Dynamic.

 

[disneymom3]

I like the "creative spelling" though I think that technically that movement was called Whole Language. Didn't work and now it is STILL hard to find a true phonics reader in the libraries. Very annoying.

Threads like this, creative science, teacher whims, annoying other children who either take over or don't do any of the work on shared projects, the fabulous creative spelling, people wonder why I homeschool..... I would rather they not do their creative education experiments on my kids' time, thanks.

 

[Beth76]

I've heard of the creative spelling. What a wretched method. I hope schools have stopped using that. I haven't heard of the math guessing thing. That worries me because my school is starting some sort of new math cirriculum. There's a meeting about it next week. I will definitely make sure to attend.

 

[janette]

Anyhow, long story short.... he got a LOT of points for not being creative... :

I'm guessing that you mean he got points deducted.

I went to school a long time ago but I remember that Science projects were expected to be creative. Isn't Science more about discovering something new than rehashing experiments with expected results.

I find the new guessing math to be confusing but it does focus on the logic of the problem and not just the mechanics. I just can't help my kids with their homework but it doesn't seem a bad way to teach math.

 

[Castlebound]

I had a fluffy science teacher when I was in Jr. High. Once a month we had to visually show a scientific concept with a short paragraph long explanation on the back of the project. Think science scrapbooking! It had to have a nice boarder and the more creative the higher points. I had points taken away once because this teacher thought that the picture of a strawberry I chose was ugly. The project was suppose to show something at least 3X larger than the real thing. My picture showed that, but the teacher said that the shadows on the strawberry were too overpowering! WTH! So I feel your DS's pain. I've been there and done that.

 

[chris1gill]

Uh, my son had CREATIVE SPELLING TOO!!! I'm the OP here LOL... Yes, creative spelling, I just loved that one!! I think he had it in kindergarten and first grade.... He's in fifth grade right now by the way....

You know, there is an irony here with DS.... according to the John Hopkins test, he came in the 80th percentile in Math among EIGHTH graders... that means he can go to summer camp for their math and SCIENCE programs!!! Not only that but he's earned a state award for his rankings Can you imagine the irony here???

 

[chris1gill]

I had a fluffy science teacher when I was in Jr. High. Once a month we had to visually show a scientific concept with a short paragraph long explanation on the back of the project. Think science scrapbooking! It had to have a nice boarder and the more creative the higher points. I had points taken away once because this teacher thought that the picture of a strawberry I chose was ugly. The project was suppose to show something at least 3X larger than the real thing. My picture showed that, but the teacher said that the shadows on the strawberry were too overpowering! WTH! So I feel your DS's pain. I've been there and done that.

Holy crap, my son would fail this in less than an instant!! Thanks for sharing this though, it really brought a smile to my face.... some of these things are just crazy aren't they??

 

[pigletz]

I don't understand how the teacher couldn't tell what was going on in the classroom. I use partners and groups all the time in my classroom. No its not that I don't want to "teach". I do plenty of that. I see an amazing thing when the students work together. I get to watch them take the information that I taught them, add in some research that they've done, and turn it into their own. The conversations I hear among my 8th graders during these projects never fails to amaze me. I don't think that they would be getting as much out of the material if they were just listening to me lecture and doing worksheets. Many of my projects are on the creative side but I don't take points off for the project not being creative enough. My students also learn very quickly that I know exactly who is doing what in each group. I never punish students who are doing their share just because someone in the group didn't do what they were supposed to. This is also in an inner city school with huge gang problems and 40+ students in the classroom. If I can figure out who is doing the work and who's not then anyone can.

 

[rayelias]

There was a thread a while back about the new trend in math...guessing. I swear. They give the kids problems they couldn't possibly do at that level and have them guess at answers. This somehow prepares them to learn math.

Actually, I think this is a good idea. I certainly wouldn't GRADE on it, but it's a great way to get kids to learn how to learn and figure.

Whenever we interview for a management position, we typically ask a couple seemingly difficult math questions that no one could know the answer to. We're not even that interested if the applicant gets the right answer as much as HOW he got to his/her answer. It shows problem solving abilities and whether they're able to "think outside of the box".

For example one of the questions we may ask is "How many dollar bills laid end-to-end would it take to stretch to the top of the Empire State Building?"

Now, I have no idea how tall it is, nor does it matter. This is an example of a good response... "Well, the Empire State Building is probably 150 stories tall. Each story is probably about 12 feet high, so you've got 1800 feet, plus another 100 feet or so for the pointy part. A dollar bill is about 8" long. 1900' X 12" = 22,800" / 8" = 2850 dollar bills." It shows reasoning ability and the ability to do math.

An example of a bad response would be "I dunno" or "what does that matter" or "What's the Empire State Building" or incorrect addition/multiplicaiton/division, or thinking a dollar is 3' long.

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I had the flip side Senior year in PHysics class--group projects of 4 (always in class) and the guys did ALL the work. Made us girl folk jot it all down. Mildly annoying at times. Good guys otherwise--I don't think they meant to do it that way.

 

[clh2]

I've heard of the creative spelling. What a wretched method. I hope schools have stopped using that. I haven't heard of the math guessing thing. That worries me because my school is starting some sort of new math cirriculum. There's a meeting about it next week. I will definitely make sure to attend.

I don't mean to hijack this thread - there are several "new math" curriculums out there. They are supposed to teach kids how to become better problem solvers, unfortunately, IMHO, they get away from the basic concepts, and the subjects are very "jumpy" i.e. one unit doesn't necessarily build into the next unit. Sorry to say, I've not been impressed. There is far more importance placed on being able to tell HOW to solve the problem (be sure to use complete sentences with proper grammar) than there is on actually solving the problem.

 

[tw1nsmom]

Creative spelling isn't really an exercise in spelling per se. Although, for the very young school age child it does get them to think about the sounds of the letters. The real purpose is to allow them to learn about the writing process. If they only wrote the words they knew how to spell correctly, then they wouldn't be able to adequately express themselves as kindergarteners and 1st graders. They should still be given spelling lists/tests and have proper spelling modeled for them.

 

[clh2]

Back to the thread at hand...sort of

My DD had a teacher like this in 3rd grade. After spending a day at a 1-room school house, the kids had to recreate a dioramma with the 1-room school house. The teacher took ridiculous deductions becuase things were not scaled properly. Now, if that had been an art project, I would have been OK with the deduction especially if the project had been done in art class, with all students having access to the same raw materials.

But NO, this was a social studies grade, with the "use things around the house" and don't buy pre-made items. Of course, the premade items people did buy were all to scale, and looked pretty, so those kids got better grades. If you tried to make it yourself, then it was far easier to get a "not made to scale" deduction, because you were using stuff that you could find around the house. This project STILL IRRITATES me and DD did it 3 years ago.

I agree, too bad the teachers can't have projects that are directed at learning, and skip the creative bull.... Except in art class.

 

[Sandy V.]

Partner projects should be outlawed unless 100% done IN school and the teacher closely monitoring the contributions of each child, i.e. each child picks a specific part of the project to do and does that part.

I agree completely. And each person should then be graded on THEIR part. I have always HATED group projects. My DH, my teens, and me have always had others ride piggyback on OUR efforts on those darned things!!

I have never found them to teach teamwork or collaboration-they are usually "How much work can we get Joe/Judy to do for the entire group so we can all take credit for it?"