Schools like parents to be involved with their kids education and ask that parents take the time to look over their children's homework. They encourage parents to promote education. They even send home notes for parents to sign that they understand the homework being assigned, what the deadlines are, and that they will check it over. Ummm, is it me, or is this starting to sound like strong-arm tactics. Rest assured, the teacher said they just wanted to make sure parents are aware of what was being assigned and when it was due. That way the little darlings could not say they didn't know the assignment was due the night before it has to be turned in, ten minutes before bedtime. Okay, but that doesn't explain away the part of checking it over. I would assume that with a long term project, the teachers would be checking progress in school periodically. My boss used to periodically check on big projects that the staff was working on to assure that we were on track for reaching our ultimate goal, not my mom.
I digress. This post is not about the assignment given to the parents disguised as homework for the kids called the All About Me Timeline. The assignment in which the "kids" were supposed to put together a poster with a time line of dates, photos and other stuff representing their lives until the present. Everyone knows that first graders have access to family photos (usually stored on line), keep a journal of the dates of major events in their lives and can create a neat timeline with printed titles and captions. This should be easy for the kids to do.
But we are now in 4th grade and the homework has become a little more complicated.
This time she asked me to look over her stem and leaf graph. My first thought was that they were combining science and math to provide a correlation between the two subjects. But after looking over the data, I saw no sign of trees, leaves or anything remotely like a plant. And the data was about kids in a school and their grades. I got the distinct feeling I was at a disadvantage for balancing our finances, doing the wash and picking up the groceries so I could make dinner. How was I to know I should have been in school with my daughter?
| Test Scores Out Of 100 | |
| Stem | Leaf |
| 9 | 2 2 6 8 |
| 8 | 3 5 |
| 7 | 2 4 6 8 8 9 |
| 6 | 1 4 4 7 8 |
| 5 | 0 0 2 8 8 |
There were 22 grades listed as a result of students taking a test with possible high score of 100. The kids had to list out the graph to show how many kids scored in what range. The problem listed out the scores as follows: 92, 83, 85, 50, 61, 92, 96, 76, 64...and so forth. Was the plot shown correct?
"Could you explain the plot to me?" I asked. I had no idea what to make of what I was looking at. Patiently she explained. When I did not get it, she tried again, this time using very simple words in a loud voice. Then we took a break so she could use the bathroom and I could check the internet to see if she had learned some foreign language or was just trying to hose me. After all, my graph would have looked a lot different.
| Test Score range | Number of children |
| 99-90 | 4 |
| 89-80 | 2 |
| 79-70 | 6 |
| 69-60 | 5 |
| 59-60 | 5 |
Frantically I did my Google search. What was I missing that I could not make sense out of my daughter's chart? Turns out the 9 on the stem side of the chart represented 90, the 8 for 80 and the numbers on the leaf side of the chart was the other part of the grade listed. Huh? Apparently this chart is commonly used for statistics of large amount of numbers. Really? How come in my 20+ years working in an office environment I never came across this? Perhaps, because the powers that be just wanted to see the numbers in a quick easy format. 4 kids received scores in the 90s, 2 kids received scores in the 80s and the rest either received average scores or did not get the concepts presented on the test. With the chart my daughter is being taught, you would have to count up the individual scores if you wanted to convert the numbers to percentages. And it take 8 steps to create this graph in word. Sounds like a lot of work to present some pretty simple data.
Feeling better educated, though still mildly confused, I reassured my daughter that her graph was correct and did represent all the data shown.
After which we took a look at language arts and where to put commas in a sequence listed in a sentence. They still teach academic prose, which includes a serial comma before the and, something I have not used in about 20 years. In newspaper writing, incidentally, you seldom find a serial comma. I have found that it is seldom used in any other writing outside of school or law firms.
I quite possibly just flunked 4th grade.
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