Going out on a limb here, but I think we as teachers place far
too much blame on teaching methods when trying to figure out
why true learning hasn't taken place.

I had a couple of really low high school classes this year.
They were all taught Order of Ops with P E MD AS. They all had
trouble with it. We spent tons of time on not just the what
but the how and why of P E MD AS. They were bored beyond
belief. We've been doing this since middle school! When do we
get to Algebra! But they still had trouble. As a class they
couldn't consistently evaluate an arithmetic expression
accurately. Some were very defensive about it -- but I did it
this way...(hmm, what is it about "order" that you don't get).
There were a few in this group that simply could *not* get the
hang of exponents no matter how many times (and ways)it was
explained and broken down for them.

When we did get to algebra, they had mountains of trouble
"undoing" Order of Ops. No, you can't isolate 3x by subtracting
3 -- let's relook at P E MD AS. (What, again? But we've been
doing this since middle school...)

While at the beginning of the year I may have thought their
prior teachers did a poor job of teaching Ord of Ops, by the
end of the year I realized that it didn't much matter -- these
kids just were not going to master it. Meanwhile, other
students (college prep or honors level) were taught the acronym
the very same way by the very same prior teachers and fully
mastered Order of Ops. The variable is the students.

Share This Post | Report This Post

Next Post >>

Posts on this thread, including this one