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| February 2009 |
Vol 1, Issue 1 | |
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California Learning Strategies Center
Helping parents get their advanced and gifted students the education they deserve, inside and outside the classroom
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| Dear Parent, |
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The California Learning Strategies Center helps parents of advanced and gifted students, K-12.
This issue of the CLSC newsletter provides advice and practical tips from authors and mathematicians to help you nurture your child's interest in writing and math.
Please don't hesitate to forward this newsletter to other parents.
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| Author's Quick Tip for Parents |
Author Mark London William's quick tip:
Have your child explore the idea of "fan fic" -- short for "fan fiction" -- related to favorite series, characters, films, etc. These exist for game worlds (Halo, World of Warcraft), film franchises (Star Wars, Star Trek) and even other books (Harry Potter). Since their writing is to be shared --- posted online for free or read to friends -- they are free to play in anyone's sandbox they want to. A few quick online searches will provide plenty of "fan fic" sites for whatever world intrigues your own young bard.
Mark provides more tips for parents at www.LearningStrategiesCenter.com/resources.html
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Contact Us
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California Learning Strategies Center
9452 Telephone Rd. #188
Ventura, CA 93004
(805) 642-6686
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| Keeping Your Child's Interest in Math Alive, K-12 |
 "The [typical] math curriculum doesn't differentiate kids from machines, and kids will never be able to beat machines." Richard Rusczyk
Richard Rusczyk is the founder of The Art of Problem Solving (www.artofproblemsolving.com), which provides interactive on-line programs for avid math students. He is also a USA Mathematical Olympiad winner, Princeton graduate, director of the USA Mathematical Talent Search, and author of numerous math textbooks.
We asked Richard for his thoughts about how parents can help students retain their passion and enthusiasm for math, and came away with the following helpful tips:
If your advanced math student doesn't want to show his or her work, try to get the teacher to give more challenging problems.
Many advanced learners understandably balk at showing their work on simple math problems. If they can get the answer by doing the work in their heads, it just seems like busywork to write down the steps for the teacher. But if they're given harder problems, they'll need to show their work for their own sake, in order to get the right answer. This will help them understand why it's important to be able to show their work for complex problems.
Parents should expose students to problem solving through math competitions as early as 3rd or 4th grade.
"The most important function of math instruction is to teach problem-solving skills. The actual math is secondary - it's the way of thinking that is so important." Too often the math curriculum emphasizes rote skills that can be performed better by a computer. As Richard succinctly states, the math curriculum "doesn't differentiate kids from machines, and kids will never be able to beat machines."
Generally the first place kids are encouraged to think creatively in math is through competitions such as Math Olympiads for Elementary and Middle School (http://www.moems.org/) which advanced learners can tackle as early as 3rd or 4th grade. Competing in these contests requires young students to solve problems without a lot of advanced tools, and without using "textbook recipe solutions." Math competitions are available from elementary school through high school.
Richard notes that when he was at Princeton, many students who hadn't participated in math competitions - including those who graduated from strong academic high schools at the top of their class - dropped out of math and science classes because they weren't prepared for creative problem-solving challenges. Richard credits the problem-solving skills he learned in math competitions with making it easy for him to do well in all of his college classes, despite attending an average high school.
Enthusiasm for math needs to come from mom and dad.
People generally don't become elementary school teachers because they want to teach math. Usually they're more interested in, and enthusiastic about, teaching reading or art. Also, if teachers are afraid of math, kids pick that up. Particularly at the elementary school level, parents need to convey enthusiasm for math at home.
Try to arrange for your advanced student to work on math independently during the school day, particularly in middle school and high school.
Richard suggests that you work with your school to see if your child can take the year-end math test at the beginning of the year. Students who get an A on that should be able to spend their time doing independent study at their level, rather than sitting through lessons on topics they've already mastered. This is particularly important as students get older and have less time outside of school for independent math study.
Rather than simply accelerating your child through the high school math curriculum, expose them to math outside the standard curriculum.
Okay, this tip doesn't come from our interview with Richard, but rather from an excellent article he wrote, "The Calculus Trap." Helping talented math students develop their abilities requires more than merely accelerating them through the high school math curriculum and then sending them to the local community college when they've exhausted their high school's offerings. "Developing a broader understanding of mathematics and problem solving forms a foundation upon which knowledge of advanced mathematical and scientific concepts can be built. Curricular classes do not prepare students for the leap from the usual 'one step and done' problems to multi-step, multi-discipline problems they will face later on." (http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/AoPS_R_A_Calculus.php.)
Advanced math students need to work with other advanced students.
Richard also writes that, "Students of like interest and ability feed off of each other. They learn from each other; they challenge and inspire each other. Going from 'top student in my algebra class,' to 'top student in my [community] college calculus class,' is not a great improvement. Going from 'top student in my algebra class' to 'average student in my city's math club' is a huge step forward in your educational prospects. The student in the math club is going to grow by leaps, led by and encouraged by other students."
For more tips from mathematicians about keeping your advanced math student engaged and challenged (including fun and interesting math activities for car rides!) please go to www.LearningStrategiesCenter.com/resources.html
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| Encouraging the Natural Born Storyteller in Our Children
by R.L. LaFevers |
R. L. LaFevers ( http://www.rllafevers.com/) is the author of fantasy novels for young readers, including the Lothar's Blade trilogy. Her most recent book, Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos, was a Junior Library Guild selection, a Booksense Summer Pick, and a 2007 Agatha Award nominee.
Whenever I do school visits, I alw
ays ask the students who among them likes to write. Around 50% of the kids raise their hands. When I ask the question again, this time adding, "Who likes to write if you get to ignore all the rules," 98% of the kids raise their hands.
The following tips are designed to help remind your child -- and yourself -- that writing can also be a form of play. We want to reinforce those parts of writing that equal play in your child's eyes.
#1) Let them give rein to their natural enthusiasm and sense of play by ignoring some of the writing rules that make it feel like work. You want them to get in touch with that intuitive part of themselves that recognizes that writing and creating can be play. Rules can always be taught later, but a sense of joy, once lost, is very hard to recapture.
#2) Invest in nice quality notebooks and pens. It's easy to dismiss the very kinesthetic pleasures of writing-the feel of a silky pen flowing across thick, smooth paper. High quality pens and notebooks can bring that extra pleasure to the act of writing. Plus it signals to them that this is a valued activity, one that can feel good physically and one that the adults in their lives value enough to indulge them in.
#3) Give them permission to show no one their work if they so choose. Some people need absolute privacy in which to play and risk failure, especially children who are used to doing exceedingly well at all things.
#4) Do not critique their writing, even if they beg you. If they are dying for feedback, let them know what they did really well and encourage them to do more of that. Or better yet, ask them which part they had the most fun doing.
#5) As hard as it is for us adults, do not weigh down your children's writing with your desires, dreams, and ambitions. If you child loves to write and spends hours writing, do not begin pushing them to become a writer or enter writing contests or in any way burden their writing with expectations of careers or publication. Let writing be one area of their lives that is process oriented rather than result oriented.
For more advice from authors and poets about encouraging young writers, please go to www.LearningStrategiesCenter.com/resources.html
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| Nurturing Teen Writers: Of Sparks and Unruly Sentences
by Mark London Williams |
Mark London Williams ( www.dangerboy.com) is an author, playwright and journalist, and creator of the acclaimed young adult time travel series, Danger Boy.
My oldest son -- the inspiration for Danger Boy, back when he was a toddler (he uttered the title phrase while running around the house one night) -- is getting ready to enter high school this fall.
While he loves reading, he also likes storytelling -- though the degree he enjoys writing is still up in the air. In part this might be because he's seen the precarious life of a "writer" -- even a published one -- led by his dad. And yet he loves to tell stories -- he talks them, "pitches" them to me, discusses original ideas with friends -- and imagines himself, I think, telling those stories some day as a videogame designer.
In part, this is generational -- at the moment, games are exciting and immersive (the way movies were for me when I was his age).
But it may well be that whatever love of story he has came from the "drawn card" of growing up in his particular family, as opposed to being nurtured in school.
In particular, his experience in middle school was somewhat neutral, when it came to instilling a real excitement about writing. In part, this was because it was a fairly traditional institution, in spite of his being in a school-within-the-school. And there were well-meaning teachers there.
But I was struck by a paper of his I read -- a book review for English class. He was trying to get across that a fantasy book he'd relished could be equally exciting for non-genre fans, and he used some phraseology that surprised me in his summary -- calling it, in so many words, a "bastard stepchild let loose on the streets," melding a couple of genres at once. I paraphrase -- his paper isn't in front of me, and his own sentence was much more colorful; it reminded me of gonzo journalism. I thought it was great; the teacher liked it, noted it, and asked him -- in the revision -- to essentially "tone it down" a little.
Use not just language, but metaphor and simile more "acceptable" -- more "understood" -- at school. Or perhaps specifically, by teachers.
Why?
I wrote a paper in college once that was lauded for its "journalistic bravado," but graded down a notch because it wasn't delivered in quite dry-enough language. And yet, I've worked more as a journalist than as any other kind of writer. Thankfully, I didn't take "journalistic bravado" as something to be avoided, and I hope my son -- college still some years ahead of him -- doesn't either.
What is it in schools, in other words, that makes teachers want to reign in a voice that is clearly excited, inspired, or "coloring outside the lines," (to use the now thoroughly inside-the-lines phrase).
You would think -- given the pervasive lack of written skills afflicting even adults (I teach a business writing class for one school, and a creative writing class for another. In the former -- taken by adults mostly looking to get ahead in traditional jobs -- I have students who've never been encouraged, "allowed," to write for themselves), that idiosyncratic writing and flourishes might be encouraged.
There's the adage that you can't break the rules until you know them, which is true in any artform that requires amassing skills. But the thing is, you have to want to know that particular set of rules in the first place.
And the more we "standardize" -- insist on book reports or essays being written in a somewhat dry "acceptable" style, rather than encouraging the love of expression in the first place (and letting that impulse, that joy, find different channels later), the more we will lose people -- boys and girls in schools -- to the sheer joy of expression, in whatever form they choose.
Less able to express themselves, they also become -- by extension -- less able to fully participate in democracy. That may be an essay for another day.
Right now, instead of worrying so much about whether a sentence is "proper" (or whether what they're writing will help in some u
pcoming, imposed-from-the-top, mind-numbing "test"), let's just be grateful when any sentence -- any pure expression of a boy or girl's -- a new writer's -- soul, is making its way to paper.
That is, after all, a cause for celebration.
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How does the Center help parents of advanced and gifted students?
- We help parents respond to the myths and misinformation teachers believe about educating bright students;
- We provide information about the wealth of innovative learning options available for both home and school;
- We help parents negotiate with schools about implementing appropriate options for their child;
- We draft letters to teachers and administrators to help parents advocate for their child;
- We provide advice from writers, mathematicians, poets and scientists to help parents nurture their children's passion for learning;
- We offer DVD programs to help students implement the most effective brain-based techniques for learning, studying, and testing.
Visit us at www.LearningStrategiesCenter.com
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