On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 08:21:25 -0500, "Donna Metler"
<dmmetler@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
>"AshP" <felmae44@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:305a1378-0059-4059-95b9-bac24b9918c7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>On Jul 9, 3:31 pm, Richard Fangnail <richardfangn...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>wrote:
>>> One of my co-workers couldn't find one of the southern states on a US
>>> map. I don't know about you, but when I was little I had a wooden
>>> puzzle where each state was a piece. I sometimes used Florida as a
>>> gun.
>>>
>>> I've read articles where kids can't even find US on a world map, or
>>> their own home city on a state map. What kinds of similar things have
>>> you seen?
>
>>Richard,
>>I am an inner city high school English teacher in New York and I have
>>seen the same behaviors you are referring to. I had a 9th grade
>>student who pointed to Africa as where they thought their location was
>>on a map. This is definately disturbing to me. I do have to say
>>however that I was never really taught geography in school. Anything
>>I know I learned the same way you did, through a wooden puzzle.
>>Perhaps schools should think about this more.
>
>The culprit (in schools, anyway) is the pu****ng down of academics
earlier.
>If there are no puzzles because there's no "free play" time in the early
>grades, there is no chance to learn the skills which can be learned from
a
>puzzle. In grades K-3, the focus is reading, reading, reading, with a
little
>arithmetic thrown in. Social studies and science largely take a secondary
>role, if at all. If parents assume the school will teach these skills,
>they're probably going to be wrong.
>
>For parents, right now the Target dollar section has nice paper world and
>USA maps (we mark things like where different animals come from, where
>dinosaur fossils have been found, where we've gone on trips, where people
we
>know live, and so on right on the map-at $1 each, it's a cheap way to
make
>geography a little more real to my preschooler). They also have world and
US
>map puzzles in cardboard, but they're 24 piece jigsaws, not each separate
>country. I found a wood map puzzle at Target in the kid's section, and
I've
>purchased North America, South America, Europe and Africa online in
>cardboard (still looking for Asia and Australia). For my preschooler, I
make
>color photocopies of each puzzle so she can just match shape to shape,
>before actually doing it as a puzzle.
>
>
We never had these puzzles in our schools back in my day. We were
expected to color maps.
I know that the junior high here does a geography course. The
problem, of course, is that kids learn the things for the *test* and
then promptly forget them.
One thing my preschool did was a *geography* project where we sent out
our gingerbread boys to other schools and then got postcards from
them. We put pins in the map to show where the gingerbread boys had
been. We also looked up facts or had the postcards with facts on them
about the particular places our gingerbread boys visited.
>
>
>
--
Dorothy
There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..
The Outer Limits
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