Bill Marsh
Posts:
341
From:
Port Angeles, WA
Registered:
12/22/08
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Re: Inclusive and exclusive definitions... again!
Posted:
Mar 27, 2010 5:27 PM
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Al wrote:
> ... imagine if we showed
> kids pictures of Saint Bernards exclusively with the
> label "dog" for the first 7 years of their lives.
> Then trying to convince them that a Chihuahua is a
> "dog" too will be a difficult process. Yet that's
> what we do with quadrilaterals all the time - no
> wonder everyone gets confused!
There is a similar problem mentioned in the recent NRC report on Math. Learning in Early Childhood.
Most triangles shown to or played with by preschoolers are equilateral, often paired or tripled with a circle and a square.
When I asked some Pre-K teachers recently to draw a circle, a square, and a triangle, only one triangle was non-equilateral, and it was isoceles. All triangles and all squares were drawn with a horizontal bottom edge, the way it is stable to put a square block on a table.
There is now an effort in pre-K to show kids triangles of different shapes, and figures in different orientations.
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