In case anyone (eg some non-native speakers didn't get it) he's tryna say she looks familiar. And that he thinks he knows her.
(I'm sorry I just assumed their genders)
Yes and no. Phonetic teaching is a useful skill but it can also lead to problems exactly like the text above. They wrote it phonetically with the vocabulary they had since they have heard it before but most likely never had to spell it. This is also why young children tend to use "k" in words instead of "ck" or leave out the "a" in words like leave. Vocabulary is something all children should be, at the minimum, learning and tested on throughout their formative years all the way through high school. However, many teachers are instead letting kids slide when it comes to vocab or even school room readings because they don't want to "hurt" their feelings in front of the other kids. It frustrates me to no end when a high school aged or older person asks a me a question about something right in front of them instead of reading the answer to their question which is also right in front of them. I've made younger coworkers literally read out loud what something says instead of answering their
question because if they had bothered or tried to read what they were supposed to be reading it would answer the question. Now if they have a legitimate reading problem, like severe dyslexia, then that's different. Reading comprehension and by extension vocabulary has seemed to drastically dropped in the last few decades.
@lucky11 I agree that reading and vocabulary should be taught better than it is, bit I severely disagree with the stated cause. Some teachers might do this, but it's been my experience that when a student doesn't get the extra help they need with reading/vocabulary, it's because the teacher is struggling to balance teaching 30 kids everything the core says he or she must teach, while enforcing a basic code of conduct to maintain order. And yeah, that's 100% a teacher's job, but that job doesn't actually allow enough time to give every student the attention they need.
I think the real problem is that our schools are understaffed and the current curriculum requirements need revisions. Also, the way we teach could use some refining.
Teachers spend most of their days teaching lessons to rooms of students. And often spend student work time evaluating student work. Which leaves little to no time for helping students.
Even if a teacher spends that time helping students, it's not nessicary enough time, and then he or she must evaluate student work on their own time. Which leads to the kind of overworked teachers who want to help genuinely but are to stressed and tired to notice that little Timmy's poor grades directly correlated to when he started wearing that same sweater all the time even though its 80 degrees and he's clearly hiding evidence of child abuse.
More teachers would help, obviously, but so could some changes in how we teach. Many schools across America are opting to give students laptops instead of more teachers. I assume this is a combination of getting good deals and the fact that it looks better to the public. Giving kids laptops makes you look like a good school. Hiring more teachers only makes you look like a bigger school. But I digress.
We can make videos of the same lesson, and then assign students to watch them and ask questions when they need assistance.
Computers can even grade them on some assignments. And teachers would have more time to help individual students who need it. Or read every essay thoroughly instead of skimming over them as quickly as they can at 11pm because they just want to go to bed.
Obviously I don't want computers to replace teachers. Humans can help a struggling student in a way that computers can't. But I think that using computers to replace the more repetitive and time consuming parts of a teachers day would allow us a better education for everyone.
@thekaylapup I totally agree that schools in the US are vastly under staffed, lack materials, and demand too much of the teachers they have. However, my niece had a grandparents day in her school and one of the things my mother noticed was in her English class the teacher wouldn't correct students when they mispronounced words or got them completely wrong. She just said good or some other useless affirmation indicating the student was doing well in the reading and moved on to the next student. Now I'm not suggesting that all teachers are doing this but it's happening enough that it's an issue. The other issue I would argue for is that school administration has made it near impossible or completely impossible to fail students. This is beyond stupid. If a student fails, for whatever reason, they should not get to move on with passing students. There is something fundamentally wrong when students are just advanced without merit.
@lucky11 I'm not doubting it's a problem, it's just definitely not the only problem. I spent enough observation hours in schools to tell you that there are definitely students struggling that teacher just literally do not have time to help. I can't even be 100% certain that isn't what was being observed. Often time with something like Grandparents day there are extra activities and interruptions to the norm that mean you absolutely need to get every lesson done quickly. Sometimes it is more time efficient to just let students be right on a day like that as long at what they said was remotely passable. It's also possible that they were actually doing fairly well for the level they were expected to read at. If you don't encourage students for doing well relative to what they have shown they can do they will often feel discouraged. Some kids refuse to try entirely. Again, I could be wrong, not all teacher are good teachers and this could be an example of a bad teacher.
Also, I agree that it's a bad decision to just move kids on to the next level when they aren't ready for it, I think that the idea of just failing students as a solution is fundamentally broken. In fact, making students repeat an entire subject when they struggled with a couple units or worse a whole year when they did really well in some subjects is hurting their education far more than its helping.
There isn't an easy way to fix this the way things are set up now. Ideally, student would have lessons they were expected to complete and they could do them as long as they had done prerequisites. Grade levels would become obsolete as a child could be 10, still working on getting down subtracting fractions with common denominators, but also learning to write a 3 paragraph essay. Or a kid could be 16, still struggling to write a 3 paragraph essay, but also doing calculus. Obviously it would be important to ensure students kept working on subjects even if they weren't good at them, but
They wouldn't be restricted from moving on with the subjects they excelled in.
Unfortunately for this to work lessons would need to be given out nearly exclusively by video, and teachers jobs would have to include managing students progress in a very different way. Also you would probably need to give students some level of responsibility over their education. And we tend to stray away from that for some reason.
Not necessarily. What you just describe in terms of different levels of ability not being determined by the age or grade level is essentially the college format. You would need to have a prescribed criteria needed for final graduation but as long as the necessary courses were completed it wouldn't matter what order the were completed. Granted you would have prerequisites for some courses but again that's the way colleges are structured. It's not unusual for a Senior to take a Freshman level course. The only truly difficult issue would be organizing it so that it crosses schooling levels. There would no longer be Elementary, Middle, or High school levels just School and the courses. Of course there would still need to be more teachers because physical age is something you have to take into consideration. A 7 yr old may be ready for Algebra or Trig but not ready to deal with the sociological repercussions of constantly having older teens as classmates. Then there's the biggest problem
I've seen, getting parents to take an active roll in the education of their children. Some parents can't and I get that but way too many treat school as an advanced day care and fail to take any responsibility for their kids behaviors and actions. Whether that's disciplining their kids or encouraging them in their studies.
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Note: I am not being vulgar, I am trying to dumbify dictionary.
(I'm sorry I just assumed their genders)
I think the real problem is that our schools are understaffed and the current curriculum requirements need revisions. Also, the way we teach could use some refining.
Teachers spend most of their days teaching lessons to rooms of students. And often spend student work time evaluating student work. Which leaves little to no time for helping students.
More teachers would help, obviously, but so could some changes in how we teach. Many schools across America are opting to give students laptops instead of more teachers. I assume this is a combination of getting good deals and the fact that it looks better to the public. Giving kids laptops makes you look like a good school. Hiring more teachers only makes you look like a bigger school. But I digress.
We can make videos of the same lesson, and then assign students to watch them and ask questions when they need assistance.
Obviously I don't want computers to replace teachers. Humans can help a struggling student in a way that computers can't. But I think that using computers to replace the more repetitive and time consuming parts of a teachers day would allow us a better education for everyone.
There isn't an easy way to fix this the way things are set up now. Ideally, student would have lessons they were expected to complete and they could do them as long as they had done prerequisites. Grade levels would become obsolete as a child could be 10, still working on getting down subtracting fractions with common denominators, but also learning to write a 3 paragraph essay. Or a kid could be 16, still struggling to write a 3 paragraph essay, but also doing calculus. Obviously it would be important to ensure students kept working on subjects even if they weren't good at them, but
Unfortunately for this to work lessons would need to be given out nearly exclusively by video, and teachers jobs would have to include managing students progress in a very different way. Also you would probably need to give students some level of responsibility over their education. And we tend to stray away from that for some reason.