I received a new review on the Amazon page for Learn Me Good last night, and it kind of stunned me. It wasn't that it was a 1-star rating (though that's never music to my eyes); it wasn't that the lady ended it by saying that she regretted recommending it to some teacher friends before she read it.

What floored me was that she gave it a 1-star and said the book was total crap because of one story in the book where I taught the kids estimation.

Here is an excerpt from her review:
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But in the middle of the story, I began to suspect his identity, and doubt his credibility as a teacher. He wrote of teaching his third graders estimation ... he claimed to have a strong background in his subjects, having gone to college to complete teacher licensure classes ... yet there he was, using a metaphor of "punching" a number up (which no third grade teacher would willingly use, being wary of accusations of encouraging physical harassment.)

To seal his fate with me, he then proceeded to write of the difference, within his metaphor, or punching a number up vs letting it fall down. He was teaching them to round up or round down. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ROUNDING DOWN!A teacher would know that. Teachers spend years clarifying that for students and their parents.
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Forget the fact that the punch it up method is something I learned FROM a teacher and have passed on TO many other teachers, all of whom use it and love it. What concerned me was that I am a teacher, and I did NOT in fact know that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ROUNDING DOWN!

I don't normally respond to bad reviews, but I had to ask for clarification. 34 does not round down to 30? 125 does not round down to 100?

In the meantime, I posted about it on Facebook and got a ton of responses. One of my friends posted a link: http://www.jimloy.com/arith/rounding.htm
On this page, Jim Loy seems to agree with the Amazon reviewer:
"Rounding down" is ambiguous, and is not an expression used by mathematicians, nor is it found in arithmetic text books in grade school. It shows a small misunderstanding of the term "rounding."

He then goes on to talk about rounding and estimation, but every one of his examples uses integers and decimals. Not exactly what we're talking about in 3rd grade.

I figured that this was probably a matter of semantics, and that the reviewer somehow thought that I was teaching the kids to drop 34 to 20 -- actually subtracting 1 from the tens place. Sure enough, she did reply to my reply today, and confirmed that this was her understanding from what she had read. She went on to tell me that visual number lines and manipulatives are a must and gave a mini-lesson on how she would teach estimation.

I'm not exactly sure why she would think that a short, funny anecdote in a humor novel would go into detail about every single step used in the classroom (obviously, she thought punch it up/drop it down was my single verbal instruction to the kids), or even why this one detail would totally derail the book, or heck what the phrase, "I began to suspect his identity" even MEANS!

I'm pretty sure now, though, that I'm not leading America's future generation astray. I had my doubts last night, wondering if I was totally missing something, teaching the kids the mathematical equivalent of "E before I, except after C."

And maybe the phrase "rounding down" really ISN'T found in any grade school math books. I doubt phrases like, "Go next door and get ten more," "Subtract the neighbors in a pattern," or "The alligator eats the bigger number" are to be found anywhere in a grade school math book, either.

Doesn't mean us teachers (and, um, those of us who only play a teacher on television?) don't use them all the time to help the kids remember their steps and strategies.

Oh, and just between you and me...

Check out Step 2 in this 3rd grade STAAR Readiness manual I found today...

This week has been, and will continue to be, pretty messy. We're giving Benchmark tests (or as I call them, the dreaded BMs) through Thursday, and that really throws a monkeywrench into our teaching time.

So I haven't had as much time to work with the kids as I normally would. However, I have been really pleasantly surprised by how well my kids are getting the concept of rounding, especially given the shorter class periods.

Yesterday, I introduced it to them, and, as is often the case, they acted as if they had never in their entire lives heard the words "Estimating," "Estimation," "Rounding," or "Math." (OK, Math they had heard of.) We started discussing why anyone would want to use numbers that weren't exact, as in the case of shopping. I read them a story about 2 kids using estimation to win a jelly bean counting contest. The story was called, "Betcha," and I had to carefully state up front that this was short for, "I'll bet you -- like they are making bets with each other." I didn't want the kids who hear me say the word, "Beach," and start giggling and oohing and aahing telling their parents I was cussing them out again.

Anyway, once we actually started talking about tens and how to find the closest ones in front and behind the numbers we were using, and then how to decide which of THOSE was actually closest -- things went INCREDIBLY smoothly! With only 1 or 2 exceptions, these kids got it! They were doing the steps, they were rounding correctly. They really got into the whole "Punch it up" strategy.

1 of the kids who struggled didn't understand that the rounded number needed to have a 0 in the ones place, and he was trying to round 27 to 37 or 81 to 71. But even he got the concept down today.

I tried to fool them by giving them tricky numbers to round, like 95. Typically, a lot of kids will tell me that 95 is between 90 and 10 (forgetting that other 0). Not a single one of them was fooled. I gave them 7 to round. They knew that the closest tens were 0 and 10 (usually the 0 hangs them up at first).

It was fantastic. So much so, that even in the short class period, I introduced rounding to hundreds yesterday. When we started practicing tens AND hundreds today, they remembered all of the steps and all of the strategy. It was great!

My homeroom still continues to waste a lot of time by playing and making noises and not listening when I talk, but that's another issue. At least I feel fairly confident that rounding is not going to hold them up. At least not until the big test, I estimate.

I hate open-ended questions.

OK, so I don't really hate them. I really do believe that, in the long run, they are much better than multiple choice questions. I just hate the fact that getting my kids to answer them is like pulling teeth or boating a marlin.

They never want to put any thought into their answer, and they often write down stuff that makes no sense whatsoever.

For instance, one of the questions at the end of the Plant chapter in our science book says, "What is a seedling?" MANY of my kids throughout the years write, "Every seed has a seedling," as their answer. Congratulations, you looked back in the chapter and found a sentence that contains the word "seedling," but it doesn't ANSWER the question!!!

Yesterday, I gave a math test, and the final question said, "Give an example of when you would round instead of using exact numbers. Explain."

As you might, guess, I got a myriad of wacky answers. The best were any that mentioned what we had discussed when we first started rounding, which was going to the store and trying to keep track of your total cost. But some just said things like "at school," or "at a job." Um, no soup for you!

But then there were the kids who really took the "when" part of that question emphatically. On girl wrote as her answer, "Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday." I guess Wednesday is rounding-free day?

Several other kids wrote "Never. You wouldn't get an answer." Right, so let's just keep practicing this skill that you will NEVER use. (well, they DO diagram sentences in middle school)

But the one that takes the cake reminded me of Dr. Seuss. When would we use rounding? According to this girl, "At my house, in the car, in a tree, at the school," etc, etc.

I will not round that in a box.
I will not round that with a fox.

Yesterday, as part of our ongoing discussion of systems in science class, we looked at a skeleton. More specifically, I gave each pair of kids in my class a skeleton puzzle to put together. There were about 20 pieces, some depicting more than one bone, and the kids had to use brads to connect the pieces through holes.