Sitting Still. Bad Idea.

The slightly mis-named blog Obesity Panacea has put up the opening post in a week-long series on Sedentary Physiology.  Good blog.  Written for normal people, and covers the intersection between body weight, fitness, and health, from a what-does-the-research-say perspective.  Where “what the research says” is still a developing topic.

From a homeschooling perspective, the opening article validates one of my reasons-I-like-homeschooling: School kids sit still an awful lot.  And that doesn’t strike me as all that healthy. Referring here to the school schedule as it stands today, where kids spend more hours per day and days per year in class than they did in early years of public/town schooling. It’s not a contrast of home-versus-school anywhere and everywhere, but homeschooling versus how school is being done right now.   No reason the school situation can’t  change.

–> And in my neck of the woods, no one is walking five miles each way, either.  Or even half a mile.  When a new school was built by MIL’s house recently, within ball-throwing-distance of five or six neighborhoods, the road was rebuilt and expanded to handle the car traffic, but no sidewalk or crosswalk to be seen.  (In my case it wouldn’t help though — we live half a block from our nearest school, and must-drive distance to the next two options.  So the commute wouldn’t increase my kids’ exercise amounts.)

Funny story: This past Saturday at the “ADVENTure” parish program, by midday I had a kid ask if he could please stand through our class period, because he was “tired of sitting”.  I let him stand up front, near me, where he wouldn’t block anybody’s view.  Worked great.  He was calm and not distracting and both of us were happy.

More personal: Wow has it been annoying dealing with the new sedentary lifestyle of the foot injury.  Even with eating much less.  I remember the same problem when I went from grad school to working full-time as an accountant.  All that sitting.  Not easy to keep a body healthy that way.

St. Nicholas Center – Coloring Pages & Crosswords

Imagine you are a catechist.  Imagine that tomorrow from 9am – 3pm you’ll be manning the “St. Nicholas Room” for your parish’s ADVENTure Day.  You might want to visit here. Soon.

Or if you just want coloring pages, crossword, word-search puzzles, and the like, click ahead to here.

The Saint Nicholas Center.  Our friend.

 

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Three things you might be wondering:

• Yes, the coloring pages are cool.  And you have lots of choices.  Cartoon-y, greek-language-icon-y, and in between.
• The more advanced word search is the one with the cool religious ed words like “crozier” and “wonderworker”.
• Fine print says that yes, you can print out copies for your non-profit group event.  No sweating DRE’s.  Yay.

When Class Runs Behind Schedule, & Making Fair Tests

This post is an answer to Dorian Speed’s question here, since as usual I have more to say than reasonably belongs in the combox.

The topic is: When you are waaay behind schedule teaching class, how do you handle year-end?  And then, what is a fair testing method, that reflects realistic expectations? My answers:

Re: Behind Schedule

At the beginning of the year, I asked my DRE what she preferred. Our class always gets behind schedule, so I knew this was coming.  So I asked her if she preferred we move quickly, per the syllabus, but with less depth, or allow ourselves to get way behind, but cover the topic more thoroughly.  She voted “I’d rather they learn a few things well than many things hardly at all”, so that’s what we do.

–> I do try to keep the class moving forward, but there is no year-end race to quick cover twenty topics in twenty minutes.

In my opinion, the slow-is-okay method can work, for several reasons:

First of all, our curriculum tends to be front-loaded.   Hits all the essentials in the first few chapters.  So if the students only make it part way through the book, they’ve still covered a lot of high-priority stuff.

The second reason go-slow works, is that as I teach I’m naturally making lots of connections.  Dorian, I’m going to bet your bible study class is doing the same thing.  It’s impossible to teach a chapter in the bible without naturally referring to ten other scripture passages, three doctrines, a sacrament or four,  and maybe a few good pious customs and a personal story about the love of God thrown in for good measure.  The reason class goes slowly is because you are covering more than what is one the page. So you aren’t actually teaching less than planned.  Just different than planned.

–> There are times when this is a disaster.  Any kind of technical class, such as “how do I receive communion” for the first communion class, needs to cover the core of the topic, all the way through.  So it’s important to know whether the class topic and the class goal are the same thing.  The topic might be “the bible”, but if the goal is, “teenagers engaging in the scriptures and developing confidence in their ability to study the bible”, your class has a lot more flexibility than if the goal is, “memorize the key theme of each book of the bible”.

And then the kids ask questions. At the start of class, our opening prayer always includes “help each student learn what they need to know”.  Now if I’m on the Trinity and you ask me about the reason we use paper money, I’m going tell you that we will discuss that during the car line after class.  But if you have a question about ‘what is a mortal sin’ or ‘do I really have to go to mass on Sunday’, I’m probably going to answer you then and there, not wait until we get to that chapter ten weeks from now.  Kids come into the new year with a whole summer of questions about God and the faith stacked up, so the first few weeks will rabbit trail.

If I’m teaching my students what they need to know — evidenced by the fact that they a) don’t know b) want to know and c) it’s essential to the faith– then I’m doing my job. I’m not behind.  I’m at the right place and the right time.

And then the final reason we tend to run behind is that we get interruptions in the program such as “Father will hear confessions for all 5th graders during class next week”.  So we stop and review the sacrament of confession ASAP, rather than waiting until it shows up in the curriculum next spring.  So again, not behind so much as skipping around.

(Dorian, this last one may not apply to you.  But I’m sure my parish isn’t the only one that inserts special events into the  schedule.  And then there’s my saint’s party.  Guilty as charged.)

Re: What Makes a Fair Test?

I’m still working on this, but here’s what I do:

I write a study guide for each chapter. It’s a fill-in-the-blank outline of the material from the book that I want the students to learn.  (And sometimes, one or two additional notes if they are relevant.)  As we study the chapter, the kids fill in their answers.  This both helps them to learn the material, and it keeps me accountable to make sure that I taught them everything I meant to cover.

The week before the test, I send home study guides with answers filled in. I did this for the first time for all students this year, though I’ve made completed guides in the past to give to kids who missed class.   So I send them home with exactly what they need to study.  All answers to the test are on the page and in their hands seven days in advance.  And I tell them to study.

The week before the test, we do a quick review session. In particular, this year I went over questions that tripped up students in the past.  I also take open Q&A on anything that students might not understand.

When I build the test, I customize it to the class. I pull up the previous year’s tests, and nix any questions that maybe we didn’t get to this year, or that were a flop last year.   And I try to match the difficulty of the question to how well I want students to know the material.  For example, this year I made my saint  questions a matching exercise — I’m happy if you can just figure out who’s who by me jogging your memory plus a little process of elimination.  In contrast, my nasty tricky trinity question that weeds out the heretics? I keep it mean.   If you can’t keep straight St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, not the end of the world.  If you can’t keep straight the Trinity, we have a problem.

I also use my tests to teach. I design them to reinforce more ideas than what they test, and to toss out ideas that are going to come up in later years or later chapters.  For example, given the choice between three different saint facts I could use to describe St. Augustine, I pick the one that reinforces something else we’ve been studying.  On a multiple-choice question, the “wrong” answers are never random.  They are either common errors related to the topic, or correct answers to questions they will see another day.

–> The test is going to cost me a whole class period, when you count the review session, the test, and then going over the answers.   By tweaking my test design, I’m not losing that hour, because the test itself is building up and reinforcing their education.

I also have a productive handout for the kids to work on when they finish the test. So they aren’t sitting there coloring while they wait for the other students to finish.   The one I used last week was a look-up-bible-verses worksheet.  (Not my own — a really fun one.)  Something like that helps equalize the class, because everyone can do as much or as little as they have the time to manage.  My super-fast kids aren’t bored and they are learning new material, and my need-more-time kids aren’t keeping the rest of the class waiting.

After-the-test worksheets, by the way, are great for teaching skills that don’t lend themselves to testing.  It’s a handy way to manage class time, because you’re using an otherwise unusable time slot to cover material that would have sucked up lecture minutes if you did the work during a regular class.  So it helps with the time crisis.

***

Anyway, that’s what I do.  Or try to.  I pull from the resources in the back of my teacher’s manual as much as I can, but I do ending up putting a fair bit of work into making my own tests and study guides.  I’m fortunate that I’ve been teaching the same grade and same book for three years now, so I can recycle my work from year to year.

–> I know other catechists in my program don’t do this, and I wouldn’t expect them to. This is where my strength is.   Other teachers have completely different teaching styles, and I think that over the cycle of the religious ed program, the students benefit from that.

 

 

 

 

Math War (card game)

Math War is a fighting game disguised as a math game.   Played like the card-game “War” (aptly named), each card contains a math fact question, but no answer.   At each turn, the player whose card has highest answer gets to take the pile.  The kids, of course, have to figure out the answer to each card’s math fact, in order to know who wins the battle.

You can purchase a deck, or make your own using index cards, which would allow your children to practice whichever facts you choose.  (With a mixed-ability group, you could mix decks and assign each kid to answer a certain type of fact.)

This game is a great way to keep your kids learning on a day when you are feeling tired of the same old math book routine.  Your homeschooled children think they are studying math facts, but in fact they are mastering important socialization skills they might otherwise miss, such as bullying, cheating, and hurling all the cards across the room and stomping away.  Guaranteed to motivate the teaching parent to quickly return to those delightfully boring workbooks.

 

My Timeline File.

No, I have not resumed blogging.  Pretend you don’t see me.

But I got a tip on how to post my timeline spreadsheet as a google doc.

Here is the link to c&p if need be:  https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Asn_1d0UfHx-dG5nTEJSYWpsQWF2SjV4bm5iVXpvLVE&hl=en

I will tell you that in the original Excel file on my PC, it worked great. Makes a classroom or hallway-sized timeline, to fill in with whatever it is you want to study.  Whether I successfully exported it to google, remains to be seen.   But it’s there if you need such a thing, so someone let me know if it works for you.

Jen.  <– still on typing ban.  Did I type this?  Shhh.

 

PS: I do not love google’s spreadsheet software.

PPS: I originally made this for my Religious Ed class.  But I chose the “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini” labels mostly because kids never seem to know what B.C. & A.D. stand for, so I thought posting it on the wall all year might help that.  You can of course (I hope Google lets you) save a copy of spreadsheet to your own computer, and then play with the labels and centuries all you want, per your preferences.

Mater et Magistra (et other news first)

The big news first: I’m out of the hole! Yay.  I can do things like check my e-mail, or water the garden without getting out of breath.  Actually the mowed the lawn Monday, which involves more miracles than we need discuss here. (But, note to self: When in doubt, marry a man who can maintain heavy machinery.  One more reason we call him the SuperHusband.)  Was back to fighter practice yesterday after about a month off — won’t say I was 100%, but wow it sure cheers me up, getting out and trying to stab people for a little while.

***

Now for our topic: Mater et Magistra magazine. My first issue arrived right when the baby was up with croup — she and I went out in the early morning hours to fetch the newspaper, and look, I’d forgotten to check the mail!  New magazine!  Which said 3-year-old immediately claimed, and for the first few hours I was okay with that.  Until she hid it in her room someplace to keep it safe.

But we eventually cleared up that little misunderstanding, and wow, I had no idea.  This is a great magazine!  Written by actual homeschooling parents (as the better homeschool magazines are), the tone is very practical and honest.  When you read an article encouraging you to respond to God’s grace, or persevere through a struggle, it is written, you discover, by a person who openly admits to dirty laundry.

The articles in this issue ran the gamut — encouragement, general practical tips, specific study ideas, and lots of reviews.  The style is Catholic Lay Intellectual — this is the place where all the catholic nerd moms gather to compare notes.   So think of articles a little longer, a little deeper, than what you find about anywhere else in the publishing-for-parents industry.

The Catholicism seems to me to be just normal catholic Christianity — I didn’t detect a particular strain to one extreme or another, other than a sincere desire to follow God.  In my opinion, a non-catholic who was comfortable with Catholic-y stuff might also enjoy the magazine.

The format is small — half-size, like a Reader’s Digest — and very reflective-feeling.  Lots of words, smallish print, no hype, a few pictures, mostly traditional artwork.  Interior is all black-and-white or black-and-special-color-for-the-unit-study-insert.  (Curiously: the color scheme and general format remind me a bit of this blog . . . I suppose if you hate this place, you might hate looking at the magazine, too.)

This is a small, low-budget production.  But a really nice magazine.  If you like to read here, or places like Darwin Catholic, Eric Sammons, or anything by Amy Wellborn, and you homeschool, you will probably like Mater et Magistra.  Highly recommended.  Maybe ask someone to give you a subscription for Mother’s Day?

Could plagiarism be our friend?

Book review yesterday in the journal about the growing incidence of plagiarism among students.  The problem being that it is woefully easy for students to copy and paste off the internet and into the term paper; like most crimes, catching the guilty is time-consuming and always a step behind.

After pondering the problem, I’m thinking that this is our cue to make the proverbial lemonade.  Here’s my thought:

If the paper is just to help you memorize, who cares?  Say I assign my students to each do a report on a topic related to the course, and the goal is really just to broaden and deepen their knowledge of the subject.  In that case, I’d grade the paper in two parts.

Part one would be the student’s ability to present a logical paper, properly cited.  I don’t care if you copy and paste the entire thing, as long as it makes sense (in other words: you actually read the stuff) and you put quotes around the copied stuff and cite it appropriately.  It’s not so much an academic paper as a factual memo.

Part two would be a test question.  After reading each paper, I’d write down a test question for that paper.  For example, if the paper were about “The Three Main Causes of the Civil War”, my test question would probably be something like, “What were the three main causes of the civil war?”.  And then I’d either go through the class and give the quiz orally, if I wanted the other students to hear the information, or else I’d tack each student’s personal quiz question to the end of the next exam I gave.

–> In essence, the personal test questions would be the students’ chance to put the material into their own words.

Suppose I really did want a good paper, though.  Then what? I’d take advantage of the ease and inexpense of modern printing and copying technology to work through the research and writing process together.  Rather than asking for the finished paper in the usual citation format, I would require that every sentence of the paper be cited.  Is it your idea?  You put an endnote on that sentence saying “I thought this up myself”.  Are you paraphrasing someone?  You give me an endnote saying “I am paraphrashing . . . .” and cite the source.  And I would have the student enclose a copy of the texts used — not the whole book or article, but just whatever portion is being cited.

–> My goal would be that rather than fighting the temptation to plagiarize, I push the students to develop an awareness of their sources and of how they build their ideas.  Where does someone else’s idea end and my idea begin?  Where did I get my information, and do I think it is a credible source?

Given the amount of work involved for both student and instructor, I’d adjust the overall workload in light of the new approach.   In a five-paper class, I might have the students take only one of these super-cited papers and polish it into traditional academic format.

I think in this way you could move students’ writing to a new level.  The sordid truth is that a lot of what gets written by grown-ups is a bunch of blather — the repeating of ideas that don’t really hold up.  Now we have students who can easily access and compile other people’s ideas; let’s grab hold of the capability to teach our students how to critically evaluate what it is they are assembling.

Figuring Out What’s What in Medieval French

I’ve been reading The Story of French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow on and off for a while now.  Picked it up from the library about a year or so ago and never got past the introduction; got it out again recently, and have been browsing through it in spurts.  Pleasantly surprised tonight to discover I have one more renewal left before it goes back, so I may yet make some headway.

I should say right now that if you pick up this book, go straight to a chapter that interests you.  I had to slog through the introduction (I’m not saying *you* shouldn’t read it, just saying, don’t judge a book by its intro), but was rewarded in chapter one with a great lesson on the basics of what-was-what in medieval french languages.

So far I’m up to p. 100 in the cover-to-cover reading of the book, but I’ve also skipped ahead and read some bits farther along, and it was all good.  Assuming you have at least a smidgen of background on the topic, you can pretty safely just pick up and read wherever you like, and come away entertained and educated.  You do not, by the way, need to know French — English translations provided for all the non-obvious French words tossed out as linguistic examples, and some of the obvious ones, too.  (Say you couldn’t figure out that the word zéro meant, er, zero?  Don’t worry, there’s a translation there for you on p. 30.)

***

What struck me in reading the chapter on medieval ‘french’ is just how busy a time it was, linguistically.  By the year 800 a language distinct from latin had emerged, to the point that the church had to require homilies be given in the vernacular.  But this new language was both very local — not so much a unified language as a collection of more or less mutally understandable regional dialects — and vigorously international.  In addition to the exportation of Norman French to England with William the Conquerer, there was the development of the lingua franca, an italian-french dialect used in the mediterranean.

(Why did French become the, er, lingua franca of this region?  It was the dominant foreign culture.  Not unlike how the Amish call the rest of America ‘the English’, or a non-hispanic American might be called an ‘Anglo’, the Arabs apparently call all the crusaders, regardless of country of origin, ‘French’.)

–> And still more going on in addition to all that, over the five or so centuries that are especially middle of the middle ages.  Borrow the book and read Chapter 1 to get the introductory course.

There’s something worth understanding here.  When we think about language and geography and politics and culture, we Americans come from a perspective of a single highly standardized common language that has been fairly stable since as long as we can remember.  It is important in looking at medieval history and culture to understand that it was not this way then.  By getting a grasp of what was going on linguistically, we can avoid some common blunders in our historical analysis, and even hope to understand why certain elements of medieval society worked as they did.  Good stuff.  Well worth your time.

thought for food

Darwin Catholic makes a pointed Thanksgiving observation about how far removed most Americans are from the source of their food:

. . . we modern Americans would do well to recall that food comes from somewhere — and indeed that it either comes or it doesn’t. One may talk of rights to food and shelter and medical care and such all day long. But at the most basic, human level: our existence and comfort depends on those who till the soil . . .

And what I would like to observe is this: Farming is skilled labor.

When I read about the history of education, it seems like what usually gets published is the history of literacy.  The underlying assumption is that if a child isn’t taught to read and write, he isn’t taught.

Don’t mistake me, I am enormously in favor of the widespread practice of literary skills, and have the bookshelves and the blogs to prove it.  But at the end of day, I know two things:

-I can’t eat books.

-I don’t know how to farm.

And from this, I make two further conclusions:

– Farming is, on the list of human pursuits, priority #1*.

-Farming is a skill that needs to be taught.

This in turns tells me that all those generations of people who taught their children how to grow food, but never did get to the business reading and writing, these were people with their priorities in order.   People to whom the rest of us owe an enormous thanks, for it is their diligence that gave us our existence.

I am concerned that my generation knows so little about the growing of food.  The SuperHusband & I both have grandparents who grew up on farms; as adults though they practiced other professions, they continued to grow a significant portion of their own food.  The same can be said of several of my neighbors — like my grandparents, they either have very large gardens in the yard, or else own a second parcel of land they cultivate for food.

But this skill and practice has not been handed down.  My parents gardened occasionally — they knew how — but not so much that they taught us.  Our generation wants to have a garden, and we’re pretty happy if we get a few tomatoes out of it.  It is a skill we never learned as children, and don’t integrate into our lives as adults.  We seem to always be finding some other activity is more important.

We aren’t starving as a result.  Specialization of labor has done what it promises: those of my generation who do know how to farm, do it amazingly well — well enough to feed the rest of us with no apparent difficulty.  And I’m all about specialization of labor — I haven’t got the body for farming whether I wanted to do it or not.  (And I like doing other things anyway.)  But still, I think we are, as a society, over-specialized to the point of being a bit impoverished by it.  It’s a poverty we don’t notice, but I think it is there all the same.

*Alongside the worship of God, of course.  The two seem to go hand in hand rather naturally . . . wow, almost amazingly joined as, say, the body & soul that make up a human being.  Go figure.

speaking of languages . . .

In some breaking-my-own-rules goofing-off (hence my lateness in linking), came across this suggestion that seminarians study ASL.  Couldn’t agree more.  I’m mystified as to why ASL isn’t routinely taught in our public schools.