The PW Camp

[Shapley]

We don't have PTA's, we have 'Home and School Associations' at the Parochial schools. They're pretty much the same thing, so I'm not sure why different moniker.

I'm usually the one who attended, because the grade school was close by and in the town in which I work, so it made more sense for me to just stick around and attend than for the wife. She had enough meetings on her side of the River with meetings associate with her work, so we saved a lot on petrol by having me do the parochial school stuff.

We do a lot less with the High School, but we don't know as many of the parents, with them now coming from all over the region, instead of the small group that comes mostly from our parish. I suppose if I were more involved I would know more of them, but we're not a 'sports family', and sports are a big part of the school there. I'm content to work Bingo and 'Work week', and show up when asked for various non-sport activities.

[Schmeelkie]

Couldn't do anything PTA-wise last year with the move up in the air and spending 2 months with the 30 min drive to school and back - didn't want to figure out how to spend more time in town before we moved.... and Pumpkin wasn't always good about getting all his papers together - we often found out about events at the last minute... I'll see this year - would at least like to volunteer once or twice... Which reminds me, I think a form with our current contact info got buried as I know I didn't send it in with him this am... Oh, well. Pumpkin wasn't as paniced about the start of school as he was the past two years. He was a little nervous when we went in last week to meet the teacher/see the class. He's actually got a male teacher this year - which is nice as Pumpkin was saying it would be nice to have a male teacher. Don't know if I'm stereotyping, but in my experience male elementary school teachers tend to be exceptional, whereas females run a greater range of good to bad - we'll see!

Now just need to find time to look into Karate - first sport that's interested Pumpkin - see if we can sit in on a class first...

[piqaboo]

[pickled tink] Well, I'm chuffed tonight because I made fried rice for dinner, loosely based on a recipe in a 1960's McCalls Cookbook my mother used to use,
and "Intern" liked it so much she took seconds. She said it tasted very much like chinese fried rice, and was very good and she liked it.
I tell ya, I sat there with that rice and seriously considered making a frittatta instead, out of stage fright. [/pickled tink]


Altoid's first day went well. No English. All day in Mandarin. She's happy. Therefore I am happy.
However, the recent rights to play games on the "old" iPhone completely occluded any concern about which kids were back this year.
Too funny,. She told me she didnt want dessert tonight because she wanted to use the time playing plants vs zombies. Yup, OT's kid indeed.

Apparently there is no official "snack" time, so she informed me not to pack snacks in future. Heaven forfend we eat a snack during recess....

[Haggis@wk]

[generational sigh]I'm so sad, last night I saw The Fonz hawking reverse mortgages on late-night TV[/generational sigh]

[piqaboo]

Ouch.

[Schmeelkie]

after yesterday's mammogram, decided on a scale of annoying medical procedures, I'd much rather have a mammogram than get my teeth x-rayed at the dentist. Wasn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
However, today, got eyes dilated at the eye doctor (yes, it's doctor week - taking Bella to her annual dr appt tomorrow), and that's pretty annoying. got the lights low in the office - wondering if it might be better if I put my shades on... Lucky for me it's gray and rainy (not as bad as the east coast, however). Hope the random blurry wears off soon. Almost wish I had a meeting this morning...

[Schmeelkie]

Only 15 posts after this one till I get to 1000! No time now to write more...

[piqaboo]

Turns out I get 'sympathetic motion sickness'.
Was at SeaWorld yesterday (having an 2-yr pass is a nice treat) watching their new Blue Horizons show.
Lots of acrobats suspended from long swings and pivots. I got nauseated watching them swoop and dive. Oh my.

Its a great show tho. Especially if you can remember to ignore the people and watch the animals (they dont make it easy to do that).
The other show was clyde and seamore count down to halloween, with lots of old musical references, ending w Thriller. Excellent use of 20 min.

The girls (Altoid and pal) were completely ecstatic to pet the manta rays. They were amazed to learn later how large they can get in the open ocean. Picking up seastars was also a hit.

Altoid can now ask for a drink of water in mandarin. She had to put teh words together herself (create a new sentence from existing vocab). Progress is happening.

Query - why are they now taught to write "addition sentences" instead of "equations" ?

[treebeau]

Hmmm, the New Math? (find song by Tom Lehrer).
Don't forget...base 8 is just like base 10. (if you're missing two fingers)

Regards,
Tim B.

[dai bread]

Are teachers mathematically-challenged in California too?

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Query - why are they now taught to write "addition sentences" instead of "equations" ?

Speculation 1: Professional Educators are trying to make that which everyone understands seem mysterious and difficult.
Speculation 2: New coat of paint on the sameold sameold in order to qualify for a program grant.

It's not just California, dai. A math teacher at the high school where my sister teaches, in Colorado, was insisting that the force of gravity was some other number than 9.81 m/sec2. Had her gibbering in outrage.

[Shapley]

"An educated idiot writes his nonsense in better language, but it's still nonsense" - Benjamin Franklin -

We have lots of educated idiots in the education industry. Analog mentioned Sylvanus Thompson's book on Calculus a while back. It's been 100 years since that book was first written. In the introduction to the latest edition, it is noted that none of the multitude of books written since then has made Calculus easier to understand, and many have only served to make it more difficult.

[dai bread]

Numeracy is the word I was trying to think of above. Lack of numeracy. Someone who has the ear of publicists thinks that "one plus one equals two" is easier to understand than 1+1=2.

Then again, it could be the old academic story- publish or perish. Nobody cares what or where you publish, just publish.

[barfle]

Are teachers mathematically-challenged in California too?

One of the great failures of my teachers was an algebra teacher who miscalculated how long he had to teach the course, and failed to complete the curriculum. I'm sure it took me ten years to overcome that deficit.

[piqaboo]

One of the challenges for the mandarin program is that the kids will be assessed for science and math skills in English (state level tests).
Therefore the homework contains the English equivalents of the terms they learn in Mandarin.
Kids who dont do the homework may learn the math ok, but they wont know the terms, and thus wont do well on the tests.
Its a bit of extra responsibilities for the parents, tho I think its well worth it. I have no idea how they say "equation" in mandarin. Perhaps I should ask at home. Cant wait til they learn 'xylem' and 'phloem'.

[dai bread]

One of the challenges for the mandarin program is that the kids will be assessed for science and math skills in English (state level tests).
Therefore the homework contains the English equivalents of the terms they learn in Mandarin.
Kids who dont do the homework may learn the math ok, but they wont know the terms, and thus wont do well on the tests.
Its a bit of extra responsibilities for the parents, tho I think its well worth it. I have no idea how they say "equation" in mandarin. Perhaps I should ask at home. Cant wait til they learn 'xylem' and 'phloem'.

Probably they use phonetic transcriptions. I don't think there's much Chinese science, despite their invention of gunpowder and discovery of the combustible properties of coal.

[piqaboo]

Dai,
they are teaching the standard CA grade-level science and social studies/history.
The teachers are working 2x hard this year, because they have to prepare the entire curriculum in mandarin.
Cant just buy it off the shelf anywhere.
(actually, 1st grade teachers working 2 3/4 as hard, because the kids have to complete 1st grade curriculum, without the benefit of last years immersion vocab, so much catchup in vocab.)
Kids are not seeing much pinyin because they are early readers and the sound/symbol correlation is too different from English, therefore confusing (q is "ch" sound, not "k" sound, y = a segregator between sounds, not a sound, etc.)
So, most of class is aural. Some written characters. Altoid particularly likes the character for "spring".
The homework comes home in English : here's a family, name the relatives. Use the 'word bank'.
So a kid who knows nai nai, ye ye, wai po, wai gong, ayi, etc comes home and sees a family with a wordbank containing
grandmother, grandfather, aunt. etc. Ditto in math. We teach them "equals", "plus", "minus", "less than" etc. They learn the concepts in school, and the terms, but they learn the terms in Mandarin. So we get them in the homework, in English.
It will be the same when they learn trees tho I think her grade level goes to roots, bark, leaves, but not crown, or the details of bark (such as my tongue in cheek examples above of xylem and phloem).

[dai bread]

Interesting, Piq. Thanks.

Japanese has quite a few transliterations from English, and I see no reason why Chinese shouldn't be the same. And I agree about Pinyin. I got it totally wrong until some of the homestays took me through some of it. I'm sure it was invented to confuse English-speakers and show up our ignorance in a beacon's light. Is Altoid learning any of the actual Chinese characters?

[Shapley]

When I was in the Navy, we used to play some kind of strange Mah-Jongg game (actually, it was a card game we played with Mah-Jongg tiles, since we never learned to play the actual game of Mah-Jongg). I think the guy that owned the set made up the game, it was a sort of variation on 'spades', as I recall (I'm not a big card player).

Anyhow, I would have thought I'd know my Chinese Characters, at least the ones on the tiles, better, but we used the tiles with the Arabic Numerals and English Words as well, so I guess I just sort of ignored the Chinese characters after a while.

If we'd had an Chinese characters-only set, I may have at least been able to count to nine in Chinese, as well as knowing the seasons and the compass points!

[piqaboo]

They are learning characters. One of the 1st grade assessments is character recog (including pronunciation and meaning).
The goal is to recognize 70 by years end. Altoid's at 37 just now, so doing ok.
They also write them some in class.

I guess the word for "cheese" is a transliteration, as it sounds like "cheese-uh".
Ditto mousse as in Chocolate mousse: "chocolee mousse-eh".

I think the funniest word so far is hunger - in manderin it sounds a lot like "ewwwwww".