A mathematics test is offered for grade 5 & 6 children in Calgary through the CBE.
http://blogs.mtroyal.ca/cesmc/
Level 1 is for children in grade 4/5, and Level 2 is offered for grades 5/6. When Michael told us about the contest and that there was an exciting dinner prize for the children that win, we began to try and prepare.
Miranda went online and printed the tests with answers and wrote them out on individual stickie notes. Over 100 stickie notes covering most of the family white board. That way the questions could be pulled off the board, attempted, and breaks taken between learning sessions. He's a photo of the last 25% of the stickies.
At first Michael was to try and answer three or four questions a day. Sometimes this was hard work, other times it was easy work, and other times we just didn't do it.
The painful lessons that we went through:
1. I found myself in the my childhood, arguing with my father. Anger, hatred, frustration, tears. The parent tapes are strong. Many math practice questions devolved into "but I can do it in my head", and parents yelling "we are giving you the gift of how to do these!!! Receive this for later years or don't!!!! We are offering help, not punishing you!!!" Ah..... good parenting....
2. Over and over it seems, the lessons were about how to read the questions and about the nomenclature. "What does Product, digit, sum, number mean". The math never seems to be difficult, but the deciphering of the question is the work.
3. The tricks are around the edges. The beginning number, the ending number, whether you include the beginning number, whether the beginning number is "1" or does it include a "0".
4. Please write down your work. "But I can do it in my head!!!!!!" No please... half of the job is to leave the page so that someone can follow your thoughts. Just circling the answer will not give you partial marks and you will eventually get most of your marks from partial work when the math gets too difficult.
The test was April 27, and Michael felt very confident. He did Level 1 as a grade 5'er, and he thought that he got every question except for one. What an absolute pain though, because the work goes to be marked and the results aren't released for a month or more!
Just yesterday, June 10, Michael found out that he received a partial success. The award of "certificate of distinction". No one knew that this was going to be offered. He did not win the "dinner at Mount Royal" although that was the goal at the beginning of this journey. We tried to find out how to over praise for this, in order to encourage for next year as well as give the girls insentive and motivation for when they reach grade 4, 5, 6.
The request from Michael was "spicy chicken" as his reward for the certificate. It's an over cookable chicken bites from Costco. To over-reward him we went to a restaurant that has spicy chicken sandwiches. "Citizen Brewery".
B
Thank you so much for sharing the story of your journey together, the certificate surprize and taking the time to celebrate. Learning to show your work is so hard. I still hate having to do that.
ReplyDelete"Receive my gift!" -- I've been there many time. So hard when your feel you are offering a gift and the recipient does not see it that way. I'm still learning that lesson.
ReplyDeleteThis is so awesome!!!! Cant wait for report on froo froo icecream!
ReplyDeleteOh, here's an update on this... I didn't mention it but one child did go to the dinner at Mount Royal in Michaels cohort. So we got a report back that actually only six people were at the dinner. So six in the whole city... Ok. So there weren't that many winners. Also we were told that that family didn't do any practicing. So wow, good for James S. Anyways, the list of 'winners' was low. Which makes distinction a bigger success. Onwards.
ReplyDelete