It’s a hard, but important lesson to learn: “There’s always someone better”. I think I learned it at the same age.
I think you did fine.
Speaking as someone who was a kid who did put 300% of the required effort into everything at that age and looking back on what ACTUALLY helped me out later?
Any damned thing at all. I didn’t learn shit from that pseudo-artistic model building crap. The stuff that helped me later in terms of college, test scores, and grad school was the fact that I did logic puzzles for fun, read constantly, went to museums and parks with my parents, and played creatively all the time. Those kinds of projects in school were a total waste of time. (As was the one science fair project that my dad “helped” with. I was sufficiently annoyed that I did the rest myself and I have great memories of doing them.)
ETA: OP, it sounds like you handled it perfectly.
I’m going to agree with the others that you handled it extremely well and also agree that your kid has amazing organizing skills for a 9 yr old and those skills are far more important to her future success than any 4th grade project.
Just a warning though and you can file this for the future - when she starts doing group project those same skills are going to cause her angst when she discovers that her group partners do not have them. She’ll either end up doing the entire group project or becoming a manager and assigning tasks to try and keep the others on track. Both solutions will likely frustrate her greatly.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like we said, “Make sure you work on it a little at a time, good luck!” We reminded her as time went by, “You should work on your project today,” or “You need to get done with X this weekend.” And Daddy told her she needed to be pretty much done with it a week in advance, since she had plans the weekend before the due date. She did really appreciate how easy it seemed, compared to a massive cram session the weekend before the due date, so that’s good. I hope that this helps her develop an internal habit of planning and parceling, because I never did, and it caused quite a bit of stress.
I know exactly what you mean. For high school geography class 20-odd years ago, we had to produce a model that demonstrated some aspect of topography. My family was not well-off and we lived in a tiny apartment, so I made a cardboard and papier-maché model about the size of a shoebox that showed how the lines on a map corresponded to mountains and valleys. I thought it was pretty neat until I saw the monstrosities my fellow students brought in. (Note that I attended a private high school, but only through the great efforts of my parents and a generous donation from a neighbor.) They had models in glass-sided boxes the size of a desk, made with hobby-shop modelling supplies such as poured acrylic "water"and moss “trees”.
I felt terrible until I heard weeks later through the grapevine that my model made the teachers reconsider assigning this project at all. Until then I’d had the highest marks in my class and when I turned in the worst-looking project, it made them realize that access to resources is a crappy qualifier for academic achievement. To my knowledge, geography class hasn’t required model-making since. (And to attempt to answer the OP, my parents didn’t have much to say about it. They knew my project looked terrible, but I think they felt guilty about not having the money or time to help me make a better one.)
This problem remains, in a different form. What about children who come from poor families who do not have computers? I raised this once in a discussion with colleagues about setting an internet research based project (I was a teacher) and was met with a barrage of scoffing. Oh come on, it’s 2012, EVERYONE has a computer and internet access, SURELY! And if they don’t the kids/parents need to make an effort to get access to a computer, in a library or something!
Believe it or not, not everyone has a computer or internet access at home in 2012 (shocking!). And it is often the very families that don’t who are most likely to struggle to have the wherewithal to find an alternative. That is a generalisation, but when you are a single parent working two jobs to keep everyone fed and clothed, computer access for a school project slips down in the priorities. If that sounds like an exaggeration, consider this. I once set a homework task which involved colouring in a graph, and a tearful girl approached me to say she couldn’t do it as she didn’t have any colouring pens or pencils, and had become too embarrassed to continue borrowing from friends.
I could always spot a parent-aided project, and graded accordingly. Did parents really believe I wouldn’t notice that their distinctly average 12 year old child had suddenly developed post-grad skills? Parents and children working together can be a deeply satisfying and bonding experience for all concerned. Just don’t try to fool the teacher!
I’m a librarian and I think the scoffing was spot on. It’s 2012, everyone has ACCESS to a computer and the Internet. What they do after that is up to them.
To me, it’s the focus of both the activity and the topic that drives me crazy about these things.
My little girl (when she was in the second grade) had to perform in a “Living Museum” exhibit (She was Jackie Robinson) where she had to do the following:
- Make an invitation to the event, highlighting her subject.
- Dress as the subject.
- Write a 1-minute speech about the subject (include date of birth, death, quote from subject, highlight of life).
- Read two books about the subject.
- Put together a posterboard about the subject.
- And for one-hour, participate in the “Living Museum” where she had to recite her speech repeatedly as people went from kid-to-kid.
And for the dozens of hours in which she worked on this, she could have been learning her States and Capitals. Or multiplication tables. Or whatever. Instead, it’s like she’s learning how to make presentations for the boss.
And the amount of money some parents spent on the costumes - we had to spend $100 because we didn’t have a single thing that Jackie Robinson would have had - ball, bat, glove, baseball cap, blue Dodgers jersey, etc. You can beg, borrow, or steal some of the above, but money will be expended. And we were easily outspent - the kid who was George Washington (complete with wig and riding crop(?)) had to have spent over $200 on the costume.
So, no, I get the OP. It’s not that the child is spending her time on schoolwork, it’s just that stuff like this takes an inordinate amount of time, time which could be spent more fruitfully and time that doesn’t involve getting the parents involved in the competition.
Yes. After all, in later life she will have terrible problems if she does not know all the state capitals, and she is never likely to have to make a presentation for her boss. :rolleyes:
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I do not think that Unauthorized Cinnamon handled this well at all:
That is a horrible message. It is untrue, and sets her standards she can never possibly live up to. She needs to know the truth: that the other kids cheated* by having their parents do (most of) the work. By the sound of it, she did the right thing, worked hard, and, even if the outcome wasn’t the best, it was honestly arrived at. She deserves to be proud of what she did do, and not to be set some impossible standard of trying 300% harder after already having done her level best. Of the kids who did an honest job (if there were any others) maybe her’s even was the best. At any rate, I am sure it was very adequate.
I think you should be proud of your daughter, and she deserves to be proud of herself.
*Although I don’t suppose the kids themselves were to blame. No doubt the parents took the initiative in the cheating.
Wanna know why my kid chose Amelia Earhart? The leather jacket she had to have to make it “real”. I actually went shopping for one :rolleyes:, but found a “pleather” aviator type jacket at Kohl’s on clearance $9.99!
There might be a library close by…but that library might have limited hours. I believe that the last time my computer died, and I went to the library to send a few emails, I had to wait a couple of hours and then I had half an hour’s worth of access on the computer. I only needed a few minutes, so I ended my session early. The computers (and internet connection) at that library were pretty old and quite slow.
So, I’d say no, not everyone has access to a computer and internet. If the library is not open when the parent can take the kid to the library, then there’s effectively no access. The library closest to my old house was closed on Fridays and Sundays…which left Saturday for doing homework. I’ve been there on a few Saturdays, and it’s chaos. It would be wonderful if the libraries had big enough budgets for up-to-date computers, and high speed connections, but they don’t. Not around here, anyway. And how much research can you do in half an hour, if you’re not familiar with the system? The librarians are always as helpful as they can be, but there’s not enough of them to go around, either.
And people wonder why kids from poor backgrounds feel intimidated by school! Kudos for the school creating a situation where once again a child can feel like shit because their parent doesn’t have hundreds in disposable income.:rolleyes:
The names may be different in the US education system but the evidence suggest that Formative Assessment as part of Assessment for Learning and Personalised Learning in action means that you set and mark a child’s work based on their ability and not based on work turned in by others. The important part is that work is challenging but achievable. When marking the teacher should focus on giving positive feedback, telling the child what they have done well and guidance as to what they could do to make their work better. The child is not a passive participant in this process but should be given huge chance to respond to feedback.
When I mark English for low ability 8/9 year olds I might give them some spellings to practice or ask them to use question marks, full stops and capital letters. A similar age child of high ability would be challenged to use commas, speech marks and exclamation marks.
I would ensure that both groups (and it was common for me to have three differentiated tasks for lessons or homework, for SEN, middle and high ability groups) would have tasks or activities that were appropriate for their level.
The reason for a lot of bad behaviour in the classroom is children who are given inappropriate tasks, either above or below their level, so differentiating the tasks is not only important for the individual child, it also contributes to maintaining a healthy learning environment.
I think you did a pretty good job of ensuring that your child did not become discouraged and all I would have done slightly differently would be to discuss with the child what they think they did well and what they think they could have done differently (to improve their work).
Apologies to all if this post is incoherent or badly written but I’m writing on my phone waiting to be called for surgery (and I’m trying to distract myself from worrying)
Yeah, we…don’t do that here. Don’t get me wrong, I think this is an excellent system, but it’s just not regularly done outside of magnet/charter schools, and not done in all of those. I would love it if it were, but most assignments are given a percentage correct score or a letter grade, and that’s it. Must fit into the district grading software system, comprised of clicky boxes, dropdown menus of prefilled choices or spreadsheets of percentage scores.
I’m ecstatic on the handful of occasions when my kid is given a well written rubric before an assignment is due, but we’ve never gotten direct feedback using the rubric when it’s done. The only time I’ve gotten feedback like you speak of is 4 times a year at parent teacher conferences, where the student, who is the one who should really be hearing it, is discouraged from attending. :smack:
And assigning different tasks/homework based on what the kid actually needs to learn? Preposterous! Why, that’s not “fair”! Why does my daughter have more homework than her best friend?! (<—far too many parents would say.)
Good luck! Hope everything is okay.
Here’s another way of looking at it: ask her if she thinks she did the project well. Ask her if she thinks she got an A grade. Get her to base these purely on the requirements of the project. Then ask her to think about how much extra time and effort the other children put in for no extra reward.
An A is an A.
But see, you don’t know that. Some certainly did. But some kids are amazing. For some kids, this project just perfectly dovetailed with what they do best AND they found their groove. This project will live in their memory as the time it all came together. And some kids just sat at the kitchen table and watched their parent do the whole thing. But I have to tell you–there’s really know way to tell perfectly which is which. Sometimes kids will just blow you away, and some parents suck at projects.
I think the message “everyone who beat you must have cheated” is really a bad one. Better "don’t worry about other people–you can’t know and it doesn’t matter–just worry about what yourself. Feeling like you are the honest schmuck in a world full of lazy cheaters is satisfying at first, but in the end leads to bitterness and resentment towards everyone.
Absolutely. I forget what year it was, but one year I made a scale model of that ugly Picasso statue Chicagoans are so proud of. My grandfather taught me the math to make it to actual scale. He taught me how to solder. He showed me how to use tin snips to cut sheets of copper. He taught me that it didn’t matter what color the metal turned, because he was going to show me how to use copper colored spray paint to cover the thing at the end.
I spent two weeks over Christmas break in his workshop with him working on the thing. He taught me so much in those two weeks, but every single bit of that finished model was done by my hands. Everything. He’d demonstrate on some scrap material, then I’d return the demo, and then I’d practice for a while, and only when I felt confident would I do that step on the final project.
It was gorgeous.
And I got accused of cheating by having my parents do it for me. I was devastated. It was many years before I put that much effort into a school project again.
My mother wouldn’t even give me the macaroni to glue onto constuction paper. I had to draw it in.
I am proud of my daughter, and I think she should be proud of herself as well. But as others have said, I don’t want to instill the idea that you should make excuses for why you didn’t do as well as other people, rather than trying harder.
Also, to expand on others’ comments, here’s the problem with telling her the other kids cheated. I don’t know who had too much parental involvement and who just has a knack for this. Probably some kids had siblings or friends who did this project earlier, and they got ideas that wouldn’t occur to your average kid by looking at others’ projects, and implemented them all on their own. Is that cheating? Parents pretty much had to have some input - I used the X-acto knife to cut down the board to the right size and mixed up a batch of flour dough for her. Is that too much? If a parent said, “Hey, what if you labeled every city you can fit on there with a toothpick flag?” is that cheating? It’s just too murky to go slinging accusations.
I think teachers do arty projects, dress-up projects, and so on to make learning “fun” somehow, but I don’t think the kids find these things fun much at all. I think most would actually rather study a map of NC and be quizzed on it, especially if they aren’t the artistic type. And I completely agree that this is terribly hard on the poorer students, and it’s not fair. Our school is in a very wealthy area, and there are some kids bused in from poorer areas, and I see all the time that the school operates on the assumption that parents have time and money according to what our neighborhood is like, and the poor Raleigh kid whose parents can’t come to events because they work two jobs, or who doesn’t have money to spend on costumes and art supplies must feel like dirt.
How many years ago was this?
And let’s not forget, kids can also get Internet access at the school, a friend’s house, a public library, their parent’s school (if the parent is in college), and a ton of other places. I repeat, everyone has ACCESS.