Scaffolding, multitasking and house-improvement

Scaffolding, multitasking and house-improvement is my actual life. My father built and rabuilt 3 scaffolds in one morning (5 meters high) (how many inches is that?). Not virtual but touchable scaffolds. At the same time I saw how he built virtual scaffolds for me, for my children and even for my husband. Our family benefitted from his visit at multiple levels. I see where my youngst and oldest get there energy from. "I've got magical energy!" said the youngst. It is true. My oldest is recuperating from everything. She starts feeling better about herself. It's such a fine line between giving support and increasing dependent behavior. Art is doing the scaffolding, science is thinking how to and when.

the mean group

There are different concepts in education. One is the so called classical method that has the teacher facing the classroom. Here (in the Netherlands) this method is very common and might be used in classrooms with small groups of tables too. There is an increasing demand for more levels within one classroom. The norm is the mean of the results of the students of the same group. There is little variation in age, and variation is not seen as positive but rather as a problem. The problem is then solved by creating subgroups and again the same system of mean is used for the subgroup. There is a problem. There are quite a few children that fall out. Partly they fall out because they cannot cope with adapting to the difficulty of the tasks, partly they fall out because the tasks are too easy.

standard versus brightness

I've been thinking about how to solve the problem that some children start with more comprehension than others but still need to learn how to read and write. How can schools give each child the material that fits it when there are huge differences between children, to start with on text comprehension. There is differentiation on the level of technical reading, but not on the level of comprehension. This would mean the necessity for a complete new line of schoolbooks that are high on comprehension and low on technical reading.
Standard levels may be useful for schools, they may be useless for society. There are complaints at Universities and colleges about the levels dropping. What I observe is that the brightest children drop out and the level at the end of the secondary school is too low in the eyes of the Universities.

Puzzle sunday (2)

Today I was strolling in the windy polders. The polders in the Netherlands (picture is an example) are land won over the sea more than a century ago, at the cost of lives. My son believes that the climate will cause the sea level to rise, I am not so sure it will rise more than the 10 to 20 centimeter every ten years or so, the same as always, with fluctuations. The wind is very cold and the sheep are coming towards us, as if they expect something from us. Then one sheep turns around. The other sheep watch her and one after the other turn around and walk away.
It is no weather for sheep in the wet clay, it is time for children to do puzzles: visit Jurassic Park? And to read books, books and books...