"A Formula For Success"

In the Best of February 2007 blog, Fisch brings up a good point. He talks about how teachers should consider how they assess kids' knowledge of what they know and how they approach teaching content. Fisch says that teachers should teach students for understanding and not just memorization, or because students need that information for the next chapter. Most teachers teach their students that there is only one right answer. Fisch says that the answer depends on the way the question is asked whether there is only one right answer or not.

Fisch uses Math as an example in his discussion, and I'm glad that he did. My Mathematics for Elementary Teachers instructor teaches us just that. There isn't always one right way to do things. We had examples of children's' work that we examined. Students were given the same math problem to work and were taught how to work it the same way. Some of the students worked the problem a different way and came up with the same answer as everybody else. A normal teacher would just mark the problem wrong. Our teacher asked the students to explain how they arrived at their answer. Come to find out, they taught her a new way to work the problem and get the right answer every time. The student actually had an understanding of what was taught in class. So, yes I do agree with Fisch. There are other ways to do things and more than one right answer in a lot of cases.