Wednesday, May 21, 2008

More silly Connected Mathematics 6th grade problems

I looked over the statistics section in 6th grade, they ask kids to measure how often a paper cup thrown will end standing up, and there's a entire section on computing allele frequency with a what-you-callit chart that my 9th grader says he just learned in honors biology. The summary question is "how would you compute the allele frequency given x, y and z". Talk about real life. My 5th grader took home a worksheet that HAS pi r squared written on it where it is missing from the textbook, and he has evidently not reviewed decimal multiplication because he got one of them wrong. He's going through the ridiculous "bits and pieces 2" decimal which amazingly DOES talk about "common denominators", a term that is supposed to be an outcome, but it NOT CONTAINED in the unit on fractions and denominators. Nowhere in this unit does it say in so many words to add by lining up the decimals, add up the decimal places to multiply, or move both numbers up by 10 get integers to divide, and it's the LAST unit of the year, so obviously there's not much practice in it since the beginning of the year. The teacher wouldn't let me review the book without trying to sell me on its value and de-sell me on the idea that it's junk - she knows one of the developers of the book.

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