Post Five, Take homes and Extra Credit homework

Our take home assignments in this class have been very interesting. They are supposed to be elementary school questions, we are supposed to do the work and explain the problem. Come at it from every possible angle and address every possible question we could foresee a student asking. My first problem is that I do not feel these questions are elementary school questions. Even taking into consideration that elementary school does include sixth grade, I think most of these problems are too difficult for elementary school. I feel most elementary school kids would be very confused if I gave them these take home questions and told them to work it out. I have given these questions to a few of my elementary aged children that I babysit and children at my daycare and most of them had no clue. This upsets me because we are supposed to be dealing with elementary school aged children.

Other than doing the work, we are supposed to explain every little detail of the problems. I understand that we as future teachers need to know how to explain work and how to come at it from different point of views because children learn differently. I do believe you should teach each topic two different ways in order to give more students the opportunity to succeed. What bothers me is that how are we supposed to answer questions that have not been asked of us? Teachers do not answer every detailed question unless it has been asked by a student. If no one is asking how can you foresee every possible question. I also feel that some of my explanations were full and very well thought out. Somehow I would still get points off. My papers were always four or even five pages long. How long can these explanations possible be? Seven Pages for a homework assignment? I am just not sure what else to do to improve my grade.

The extra credit math homework is also another thing that puzzles me in this class. Why is the homework that should be graded and we should see our mistakes on extra credit? And why is it not due until the day of the test? Wouldn't it be more useful if we actual had it due every class and we went over it quickly in class? Therefore anybody who did it and tried could get credit, and it would guarantee that we were practicing and doing the homework throughout the whole chapter. I understand that as a student you can do this on your own but I feel making the homework that directly relates to our test information required would be extremely helpful. It would give everyone credit, well everyone that did their homework and give us an opportunity to ask questions in class about it.

I just feel that homework such as the take homes or the blogs is a lot of work and takes up a lot of our time. When it isn't directly relating to the material we are being tested on. Hopefully the blogs and take homes really help our grades but I'm not sure.

Verizon Phone Call Post Four

After listening to the Verizon Phone call I am surprised that these workers could even qualify for Verizon jobs. I am shocked that Verizon allowed this to go on, allowed people so ignorant to work in their stores. It makes Verizon as a company look bad, I am sure many people began scanning thier Verizon bills and checking every math problem. Especially because you would think they would have to deal with questions like this on a daily basis. If you work in billing you need to know how to bill. Verizon should have prep classes and training to prevent situations like this. The women is even so ignorant to say "It's a difference of opinion" when really it's just simple math facts. How do these workers even actively live in the world if they dont know the difference between a whole cent and a whole dollar. Children 10 year olds, or even 5 year olds understand the difference between cents and dollars. How could you possible add .002 cents and end up with such a large whole dollar amount. One cent is small and .002 cents are even smaller!

This ties into our decimals chapter because if the decimal was in a different spot the number would have been different. To properly write one cent we have 1.0 cents or 2.0 cents which would be two pennies. For whole dollars it would read $1.0 for one dollar or $2.0 for two dollars. We also need to read the labels, which we went over in our decimal chapter. Yes, these two numbers do look the same on paper, until you read the labels. Than they become two different numbers entirely. One is dealing with two thousandths of a penny opposed to two thousandths of a dollar. They are both two thousandths of something but the something is different. One for whole dollars and one for whole cents.

It is so important to teach this in elementary school because if we don't we could wind up with tons of people who dont know the difference. After elementary school you can start buying things on your own, if you are trying to buy something and don't know the difference between cents and whole dollars than someone can easily take advantage of you. In elementary school is where we should learn the basics of our life skills. I would definitely say that this is a basic life skill. If we don't teach it in elementary school than the student could get to middle school or high school and have this thrown at them. They become even more confused because they have never been taught this before. It becomes a bigger barrier than it ever had to be.

Hopefully, Verizon will learn and get their workers the proper training they need. Maybe parents will see this phone call and learn to teach their children proper money math. Just the frustration that you can hear from the man in the phone call should be enough to imply how much we need to teach children and obviously even some adults proper math.