It’s been quite a week for me to be immersed in school reform. After speaking at the Voyager’s Community School education conference, I heard John Taylor Gatto and Ron Miller speak, among other reformers. I also went to an excellent differentiated instruction workshop with Jim Grant last Tuesday, in which he laid out many of the problems facing education today. On top of that, I just watched the film Waiting for Superman. Brewing on all of this led me to this question: What is education in our public schools for? Ask different people and you’ll get different responses. Is it…
I’m so inspired about a new tool to enhance math education. A friend sent me the link to a TED talk (embedded at the bottom of this post) showing the evolution of the Khan Academy into something truly useful for – well, for just about anybody. I had come across the Khan videos some time ago, and I thought they were useful and well designed to teach more advanced concepts. Since they were not necessarily pertinent to my work, though, I didn’t return to them. Then I saw this video, and how the Khan Academy has evolved, and I got…
I recently watched a video of a teacher helping a student master tens and ones using ten frames and unifix cubes. While the video showed some of the ways Singapore Math teaches number sense well, a few things about the teaching style struck me. These are pertinent to tutoring because it was a one-on-one situation. One thing that stood out was that the teacher sometimes gave the answer to the student before the student had a chance to think. This is a mistake that is so easy to make; the tutor knows the answer, and the child doesn’t, so why not tell…
A Delaware school district has successfully implemented Singapore Math, raising enjoyment, understanding, and test scores. This article describes their success. Here is one example: Mount Pleasant Elementary Principal Joyce Skrobot did not need to be convinced to add Singapore math to the curriculum. Her school piloted the program over the past four years in some second-grade classes, and, on state tests, they outperformed the classes that did not use the math, she said. “It really establishes a strong foundation of math skills with a lot of repetition,” she said. “It’s a very concrete approach to teaching.” The district plans to…
Here is an excellent video demonstrating how ten frames can be used to develop number sense. The video shows progression from counting-on with touching, or the concrete stage, to the pictorial stage of being able to look at ten frames and see how many dots are present. Early in the video, it says the child is a kinesthetic learner, which may be true, but touching the objects is a natural early stage for anyone. So touching the objects doesn’t necessarily mean the child is a kinesthetic learner, but they may be at the concrete stage of learning a certain concept.…
In August 2010, Achieve.org produced a report comparing the Common Core State Standards with the Singapore Math syllabus. I found the report interesting, as it showed that there are many similarities between these standards and Singapore’s syllabus, though in some ways, the CCSS document is clearer in its expectations. Also, Singapore uses the British system of O-level and A-level achievement. Their O-level high school curriculum is slightly less rigorous than ours, but their A-level curriculum is more rigorous than our standard high school curriculum. I drew the conclusion from reading the report that adopting Singapore Math could be a positive…
One of my favorite humor bloggers is Allie Brosh, author of Hyperbole and a Half. I’ve been catching up on reading her posts lately, and this one caught my eye tonight: Hyperbole and a Half: Long Division Isn't Real. (If you visit the link, just be forewarned that she uses the f-word once in her post.) This is how she describes her mom’s attempt to teach her long division in fourth grade, the year Allie was homeschooled. (Her actual post contains an awesome drawing about it too, so visit it if you can): My mom was like “First, you draw…
A great article titled Waiting for Supermath came through my inbox today. It includes commentary on a video (below) of a third grader showing how she solves a four-digit addition problem using what she learns at school, or the Investigations curriculum, versus what her mother (a math intervention specialist) teaches at home, the traditional “stacking” algorithm. What strikes me most about the video is that the first method, using the graphic model, shows what seems to me an overuse of the conceptual level of addition. One strength of Singapore Math is that it starts with the conceptual level, which is…
President Obama would like to know how South Korea has risen up to have one of the fastest-growing economies and best-educated workers in just over a generation. Rather than look to a magic fix, The Lost Seoul addresses some cultural differences between South Korea and the US in this blog post. One important difference he mentions is attitude. If you ask an American student if he or she is good at math, you will usually get a straightforward answer. If you ask a South Korean student the same thing, he or she won’t know how to answer. The question doesn’t…
Among my students are three brothers in middle school whom I tutor in writing. They are all honors students whose parents hired me as a tutor for enrichment. One activity I’m doing with them is to write a letter to the president. It’s simple enough to do: the White House website has an easy-to-use contact form, like those found on many websites. Or, of course, the letter can be mailed. The activity sounds straightforward: the students should write about an issue that is important to them and send the letter to the president. It is an opportunity to discuss civics…