punched in the face

by 42 babies and then stepped on by story problems.

Learning curve: You can't teach how to solve a story problem in a day. You also can't teach it ONLY for one week...guess I'll have to figure out how I'm going to incorporate solving story problems into my daily routine..or weekly routine a lo menos.

I stepped into a third grade math class today and was humbled to tears. I felt like once again I've been screwing my kids over, as I saw her detailed problem solving on the walls and all of the student work, journals, etc...around.

I on the other hand struggled to hold anyones attention while my kids stumbled through paragraphs in English, and I was unable to give anyone any clear direction on how to solve these problems. Find the key words, find the numbers, what is the question? Sure I tried to go through the steps that I go through in my head, but I can understand the paragraph easily...how do I teach how to solve a math problem to someone who can't read the problem? Sigh... and it's so important- and there is no time.

Is that the worlds smallest violin I hear? I'm sorry you had to listen to it...Its just the noisy bi product of those punched-in-the-face-and-stomped-on days. One of those days.