I'm about a third of the way through the book (it's been a long summer), but will pick this back up.

I must say, from what I've read so far, it's very well done conceptually.

I figured I'd bump one of these update threads to give an update:

http://pokercub.blogspot.com/2015/06/just-keep-going-pokercubs-3-year-update.html

I came across an article that affirms The Nurture Assumption

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/18/athletes-take-easier-courses-fit-teammates-study-asserts

Basically, researchers at UCLA and Princeton have concluded that Student Athletes throttle both the difficulty of classes they take and the effort/grade they achieve so that they fit in with their peers.

“In order to fit in, athletes conform to the perceived (but false) social norm in their public behaviors, thus undermining their academic performance and simultaneously reinforcing the (false) social norm for the rest of their team,” the authors wrote.

I concur with Kerileanne99. Great post 

First, welcome!

Second, great post!

Thank you for the book list. Hold on to your kids looks interesting, I will probably read it! Seems like my kind of book.

Is Native Reading the book by Timothy D. Kailing? I had never heard of it, but just looked it up by title and that's the one I found. Robert Titzer is the creator of YBCR and has done more for getting EL out there than anyone.

The Dumbest Generation is an excellent book! It's very well written all the way around. He doesn't come out and say flatly that technology CAN'T lead to a higher quality education, only that so far it hasn't and actually seems to harm education. Even though I use technology A LOT in the Poker family (computers, videos, tablet, etc), I do not disagree with the author at all.

For baby signing time, I'm in the minority around here. I think the program is great, the videos are well done, are educational in many respects (beyond just some signs), and the songs are catchy. We still sing "it's time to eat, eat, what a treat" and Cub is now 2.5 years old! With that said, I didn't emphasize the videos and only played them sporadically. I focused on acquiring oral language vs signing language. No, the two are not mutually exclusive, but with language, the more complicated you make it, the more it will slow you down some (at least in the SHORT TERM). If I wanted my child to have ASL as a second language going into adulthood, I would have emphasized it. Pretty much every other EL parent around here will disagree with me and advocate baby signing ardently, and will disagree with me about it somehow slowing down language acquisition. I don't think it matters much and parents should do what feels good to them. The bottom line is at 9 months old, why start then? Your child is ready to start acquiring words voraciously!

For EC, start wherever you are! Certainly you can catch the poops if your child gives you enough sign.

As for Nurture Assumption and "The thesis is to be taken with a grain of salt," I get where you're coming from with that. I think you're correct. For those that haven't read the book nor followed the thread I made about the book, the major thesis can be summed up as "Parents basically don't matter."  At least, that's how people viewed it, and summarily dismissed it. No one wants to hear that they do not matter. But the thesis is more nuanced than that. At the core of the thesis is that we, as people, are influenced by others around us. I personally think that is a biological mechanism that stays with us our entire lives. The social setting around us will ultimately determine the values and mores that we adopt as people. That's a fairly massive determinant in who we become! Children in our society are systematically removed from the adult world that their parents occupy and are put into a special homogeneous environment called SCHOOL (and then of course the other areas where this group clusters). I don't mean to put it all on school. I think these forces apply in the adult world as well, it's just in the adult world, deviance is more tolerated and the influence isn't nearly as strong. For a child, their peer group IS THEIR ENTIRE LIFE.

I recently saw a talk by sociologist author Charles Murray where someone in the audience asked him of his opinion of Nurture Assumption. Charles had to admit, sadly, that he could not dispute a single thing in the book but that he'd like to believe, as a parent, that somehow parents matter.

If you homogenize (I call the social blender) and do what everyone else does, you will likely get a product that is like what everyone gets. Society homogenizes. That's not to say diversity doesn't exist, only that society acts as a force to blend people and reduce diversity.

EL is so outside the norm that one can hardly say an EL parent "doesn't matter" 

[he was onto something..... BIG]

I have just finished the John Saxon's Story book this morning. I doubt I'll do a very lengthy write-up on it, but will certainly opine here.

It's a good book. I'll give it 4 of 5 stars with a break down as follows: writing and cohesion = 3, interesting subject = 5, story telling, etc = 3 (at best), and content/information = 4.

There's a lot in the book. It starts out with John's early life and goes from there. I didn't find his early life all that interesting (though it is, being a military pilot in two wars) - nothing spectacular though from a narrative standpoint. Then, as the book progresses, we get to see how he came up with the textbooks, and I found that very interesting. He was teaching algebra at the community college and was trying to square math instruction with how he felt the Air Force trained pilots. His life reference was through that Air Force filter.

One night, he was trying to understand why his students KEPT FORGETTING the things they were taught.

I will stand back a moment and point out that I've read all about this "forgetting" from modern day math teachers. One teacher in particular that I have in mind, attributes this to IQ and genetics; certainly that is part of the issue (debatable how high a percentage it is though).

John realized what Hermann Ebbinghaus had formally realized a full century earlier: people forget things at a predictable rate of decay, and their memory needs refreshing to keep the skills sharp! (Hermann Ebbinghaus' name appears NO WHERE in the book, which is one of its small flaws, IMO).

If you've followed some of the more popular threads here on BK, you might recall the thread Memorization Method where us parents eventually come around to discussing Spaced Repetition.

Spaced Repetition was John Saxon's "Aha!" moment. You don't need to understand or be familiar with the technical jargon to notice it's use in real life, as Saxon did. He knew that acquiring a new skill took practice, and not just practice in a single day, but practice OVER TIME, to acquire and become expert at it. Think of learning a musical instrument, riding a bicycle, learning to drive a car, or any other skill you've acquired in your lifetime.

John Saxon then started to create his own worksheets for his class where he attempted to institute this concept of Space Repetition. It seemed to work well in his classroom. He noticed that his students were remembering and mastering the material far better than they were before. This initial success is what propelled his belief that he was onto something..... BIG.

From there, he took his worksheets and shopped them around to some publishers. He had no takers.

He didn't give up, however. He did what I would advise NO ONE to ever do..... he mortgaged his house and borrowed on all his kids' credit (to their max) to get enough money together to self-publish his text book, Saxon Algebra.

With his ONE TEXTBOOK, he went on the road in an attempt to sell it. He was staring at a mountain of debt.. something like $70,000 in an era (and area) where average home prices where about $55,000! Further complicating matters was that his textbook was not on anyone's "approved" list.

Anyway, the whole story is in the book. I found it the most interesting part of the book. The remaining portions of the book where big picture educational stuff, most of which I had already read (though not the Saxon research stuff). For instance, in the text book approval areas of the story, I kept thinking of Richard Feynman's experience of being on the textbook committee in California... and then, of course, the author actually started mentioning Feynman and his notorious disagreements with it, right there in the book.

This is why I think the content of the book is excellent. The author touched on many different areas. It's a good overview of many of the issues in education (in general); but, I have a predilection for the topic, whereas a typical reader might not.

I also enjoyed reading about the different people that worked with John Saxon at Saxon Math. Their little vignettes in the book were quite enjoyable.

The book also discusses how these other people are influencing what Saxon books are published these days. Hake, who wrote the 54, 65, 76, and 87 books BY HIMSELF with Saxon's approval, still has to approve of any alterations (which, of course, are subject to standards such as common core if he's to continue selling books). Similarly, with Nancy Larson who authored the K - 3 series with Saxon's approval.

The books that are allowed to be altered without any veto privilege are the flagship books themselves; the ones authored by John Saxon. He's not around to veto any changes, and therefore, those are the ones subject to the most alterations.

The book on the whole is quite a laborious undertaking. I'd recommend it if you think the parts I've mentioned really resonate with you.

If you're still not sure, read the wikipedia on John Saxon and if it seems interesting to you, go ahead and order the book.

Robert,

What can you tell us about Thaddeus Lott? The reason I'm asking is because he's a local educational legend there in Houston, and Saxon math played a role in his success. I went looking online to learn what I could about him, but found the resources were scant. I did come across a comment on a blog that said he had been exposed as a fraud and discredited, but other than some anonymous comment on a blog, I found nothing to suggest the veracity of the accusation.

I also know he was really big into Phonics (as was John Saxon).

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all ITT and especially to the all of those in the Levy household!

 


The geometric aspect to learning isn't just an EL thing; it's lifelong. Which is one reason why what you do NOW in the early years can pay off massively in the end (even if all you did was just EL and then mail it in for the rest of your kid's childhood). Just keep inputting and keep your own learning and growing as a mutual experience and I sincerely believe you'll be richly rewarded with the depth and breadth of your life 

Not really part of this thread, but I did just add another blog post

http://pokercub.blogspot.com/2014/11/custom-building-light-box.html


I built a little RGB light box for Cub's Christmas. It seems the timing is perfect, because lately he has requested a lot of videos on colors and specifically the color wheel. Before I finished the light box, he started to take his Picasso tiles and stack two colors together and look through them at the light to see what color they made.

Now he can do all that and more with a touch of a button.

His favorite was when I took out a yellow highlighter pen, drew a happy face on the back of his hand, asked him what it was (he stayed silent, probably because he didn't know) and then I introduced him to the black light setting on his remote control to the box. Once he saw the happy face, he was SOLD. Now the black light is his favorite setting 

PokerDad, what skip counting music/songs does your child listen to? I have one CD which isn't very clear because the voices are singing in a chorus. I am making up songs for them but this is rather slow going.

There are a few different ones. My favorite, which also seems to be the most effective, are ones that I recorded off of Dream Kids English's youtube videos. He sells an app for the whole set, which I will probably buy today and convert into an audio file that we can listen to. The tunes are pretty simple and straightforward without any fluffy lyrics. Don't get me wrong, Cub likes the fluffy lyric ones as well, and for those we watch the simple start math dvd. I'll also eventually get some additional fluffy math songs, but for now, my main project will be to get all of the ones off that app - and then if I'm feeling ambitious, turning them into my own music videos using MUS/Mortensen math blocks to go along with the song. We'll see about this last part though; it would be awesome, but very time consuming to do.

Probably the best solution yet 

I think if I were to do it over again, I'd opt for paint. Rustoleum sells dry erase paint, which I'm guessing (but not sure) would work better than just regular paint. They also have a "magnetic" primer (it has small pieces of iron in it) but I think the primer takes a delicate touch and a lot of mixing to get it right. A sheet of metal will get the job done. Either will work, I just didn't want to paint and wait a week at the time I took on the project.

If you're not trying to go magnetic, you can make it easy by buying melamine. I have some in my garage, it was my first choice but then I decided to go magnetic.

Maybe regular paint would work? I don't know, but perhaps someone out there has tried it and posted about it on the internet 

Doodle track car looks interesting! I'm going to look into that 

I'm sure some of you know that Jerry Mortensen died last week (last Thursday to be precise). From what I've seen, his legacy is in good hands with Ben also known as Crewton.

I've watched a lot of his videos (you can watch most of them in fast speed if desired) and am using the blocks to get Cub familiar with very basic number sense. I doubt I will use this all the way up (Calculus) but it's comforting to know that it can be done to illustrate a concept. Right now, we're just focused on playing and learning place value and some basics like 10+0=10, 9+1=10 etc. He typically requests to do "math" or "numbers" which is his way of saying he wants to play with the blocks.

As for password, I did find the teacher training PW to have value. He video taped himself giving a teacher training. It was helpful to me because I'm the sort of person that likes to know why or the concept behind the action. He explains a lot of that in the recorded teacher training. A lot of the paid content I could have gone without, but having access to it certainly doesn't hurt.

There is some very minor disagreements I might have with his ideas (I'll go ahead and tell you what it is). He is very strict about not introducing symbols too soon. I think he's off there. It's no different than introducing a word with its written form, and most of us around here know that doing this simultaneously is probably the most optimal way to do it. Crewton's method would be more similar to what everyone else does (allowing a kid to learn a language but they have no idea about the symbolic version of the language until later). In our case, it was too late, Cub already knew all the symbols (well, he most, he doesn't know a division sign for example)

There is certainly an EL advantage to this method. For instance, I can grab a ten and say "one times ten is ___" and then Cub will answer "ten" and then I say "two times ten is ___" (picking up a second ten) and he'll tell me. I can go like this all the way up past one hundred where the skip counting songs he listens to are in his mind.

He's basically seeing multiplication right there in the palm of my hand as we go through the song.

I can do it for the other numbers as well. The only limit is his attention span before he wants to do something more interesting like build with the number blocks 

I figure if I keep this up, he'll have the basics of math down before he's 3 and he'll be more than ready to start doing calculations!

If I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about "getting behind" as long as you're always making some forward progress.

I doubt you could overdo readingbear. As EL goes, I think I'd rank it at the very top of all products available to a parent... and wow, it's free. You might have to explain a word or concept every now and then, but even if you did nothing, it's really well done and will accomplish what you want it to.

The longest presentation on there is maybe 20 minutes, and by the time you get to it, your kids will be acclimated to it and probably won't think too much of it. I certainly think you can do far more than 5 words. Remember that the beauty of Rudolph Flesch was that the words were presented in pattern clusters. It's really easy to notice a pattern when you get 10 or more examples thrown at you quickly; especially at this young of an age when they're really picking up language naturally. At least, that's my opinion

 

That's a great idea on the stationary peddling! I think I'll give that a shot.

As for the GoWrite! roll's durability, it's a bit stronger than paper due to the laminate. A stronger solution would be to laminate your own sheet with a thicker laminate.

I didn't mention this in the post, but a valid method is to use magnetic primer and dry erase paint. The costs would be about the same, but I opted for the method I did for cleanliness and speed of the project. I didn't like the idea of painting six coats

I have all the peter rabbit books (used them for making the table actually, though they don't weigh much ). I will give them a try as well