Math scores soared after low-income immigrant students at a Los Angeles elementary school began using Singapore math, reports the LA Times. California has “adopted” Singapore math textbooks, which means schools now can spend state funds to buy them.
The Singapore books aren’t easy for teachers to use without training, and some veterans are more comfortable with the curriculum they have always followed. But you can tell when you walk into a classroom using Singapore math.
“On your mark . . . get set . . . THINK!”
First-grade teacher Arpie Liparian stands in front of her class with a stopwatch. The only sound is of pencils scratching paper as the students race through the daily “sprint,” a 60-second drill that is a key part of the Singapore system. The problems at this age are simple: 2 3, 3 4, 8 2. The idea, once commonplace in math classrooms, is to practice them until they become second nature.
. . . Critics call this “drill and kill,” but Ramona’s math coach, Robin Ramos, calls it “drill and thrill.” The children act as though it’s a game.
. . . this drill is carefully thought out to reinforce patterns of mathematical thinking that carry through the curriculum.
Singapore students inevitably ace international math contests.
When the U.S. Department of Education commissioned a study in 2005 to find out why, it concluded, in part: “Singapore’s textbooks build deep understanding of mathematical concepts through multi-step problems and concrete illustrations that demonstrate how abstract mathematical concepts are used to solve problems from different perspectives.
Mathematicians call the texts clear, orderly and systematic.
Core Knowledge schools have seen success with both Singapore and Saxon math, writes Robert Pondiscio.
So why do so few U.S. schools use Singapore math? The program requires more of teachers while offering less direction than they’re used to. And many schools spend their training dollars on fads like foldables, leaving no time or money to train teachers in a new way of teaching math.
In other math news, Pissed Off Teacher works with a veteran math teacher who no longer teaches trigonometric functions of 45, 60 and 90 degree angles. “He said there is no reason for the kids to know the exact values as they can figure out all multiple choice questions using a calculator, working backwards from the choices, if necessary.” Pissed Off Teacher is pissed off.
My oldest son has used Singapore Primary Math levels 2A through 6B. It’s been a successful choice for him, but he’s a math “natural”. For my younger son I chose Connecting Math Concepts, the DI program. The conceptual jumps that Sinapore demands were to large a wall to scale on a daily basis for my little guy. The Drill aspect of the program you mention, Joanne, is not part of the Primary Math Sequence sold in the USA (usually to home schoolers). I’m currently in the process of deciding if their higher level program, NEM (New Elementary Math) would be a good choice for us.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have known that Singapore math can make a big difference for a long time. Kids do better every time educators adopt it. That Singapore math has been slow to catch on contradicts the maxim, “It is all for the kidsâ€.
One advantage Saxon has over Singapore is that it can be used for self-study. We merely hand them the entire Saxon series 5/4 through Calculus (once they’ve memorized their facts) and say sink or swim. It works great. I would be interested in anyone out there who has been able to use Singapore without much teacher input and make it work. For us, it seemed fairly teacher intensive.
My view is that curriulum usable for self-teaching is a big plus for institutional schools. That is, if the job isn’t getting done in school (or they are going slow) parents can still have their kids move forward on their own. I think we owe kids trapped in bad school environments some way to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
I still remember using a self-paced Keedy-Bittinger text for Pre-calc in the ’70s (I think I still have the book). The course took less then half the usual time to complete, and I retained enough to test into Calculus a few years later. I only wish I’d had something similar growing up.
There’s no excuse for not having self-paced materials available wherever possible, unless the goal of education is to train citizens to serve on a jury pool.
My kids went to a charter school that used Saxon math but also made extensive (I think just about every day) use of what they called “60 second math”. The idea was to see how many problems (math facts) on a worksheet that they could complete correctly in 60 seconds. These even came home as homework from time to time and I was expected to time them and then sign. My kids enjoyed them as they were fast and allowed them to measure their own improvement. I loved it because my kids were learning their math facts while I watched their friends continue to count their fingers. The idea that kids don’t need to know facts because they have calculators available just astounds me — do you really want a kid to have to pull out a calculator every time he or she wants to do something simple like estimate a discount or double a recipe?
Plenty of homeschooling kids use Singapore for self-study.
Plenty of homeschooling kids use Singapore for self-study.
Who said they didn’t?
Sorry Fang, I didn’t see your “self-study” on the end. I know a lot of homeschoolers who use it, but none that do it without parental help.
Let me rephrase my question: do you know anybody who uses it for the lower grades (say K-6) without parental help? And if so, how do they do it?
I don’t know any Singapore Math home schooled kids without parental help. I think the make-or-break point of help is 3rd grade. Any parent can probably manage til the 3rd grade work; after that, the lack of one’s own knowledge starts to become clear.
But I think excellent math instruction needs competently versed math teachers. I think the idea of self study and home study as a stop gap when you can’t find a decent teacher or school district is fine–we all have to do what’s best for our own kids. But as a policy, the idea that math education can be simplified to where it can be taught by texts and require no other deeply competent math people in the loop after that is naive. Math is about truth, and there are many ways of exploring bad paths and many ways of exploring good paths to lead to the truth. DI works for up to the 4th grade, but after that, math requires someone to guide those paths, because you can’t keep the child from asking “why”? To a well instructed math teacher, the truths that are known, so that the struggling or inquisitive child can be told the same truth from a variety of angles, without being misled, misdirected, or lied to, or have their issues glossed over.
Mastery comes from building on the small pieces. Fundamentally, math should be taught so that what is taught as true to the 5th grader is still true for the 11th grader, so the 11th grader can connect current knowledge to the old knowledge.
Texts aren’t able to anticipate every question, every avenue down which a child could get lost. Even if they try to do that, all they manage to do is complicate themselves needlessly, introducing complexity that will confuse more students than it will help. A teacher is still needed to sort through that.
Furthermore, the kind of people who can teach themselves this material would benefit EVEN MORE from a competent instructor. They would be given stepping stones of appropriate difficulty by such an instructor–they would be pushed without too many big jumps that lose students, waste their time and lose their confidence. Bright math kids on their own spend too much time wandering around on their own trying to find problems of appropriate difficult to no avail. Instead, they often get bored, miss out on the mathematical and intellectual growth, or they hit REALLY hard problems and give up–and don’t learn how to tackle them. They could use the discipline and hard work of a good instructor helping find appropriate material and appropriately complex abstract ideas for them to think about.
Vital,
I was talking about older kids using Singapore for self-study, not K-5 age kids.
greifer, the idea that math education can be simplified to where it can be taught by texts and require no other deeply competent math people in the loop after that is naive.
Not so. I may be dumb, but I’m certainly not naive
.
I start my kids using Saxon 5/4 once they have their math facts memorized and they can read. The typical age I’ve started them is 6-7, doing 1/4 lesson per day, working their way up to whole lessons by age 8 or so. Any lesson missing more than a few problems is redone.
I agree a good tutor could advance a student faster, but why? My focus is good study habits and true understanding that comes best when a student must figure it out themselves (I’m a math guy, trust me on this one). This builds justified self-confidence, and creates good lifetime study habits.
So this is my primary grief is Singapore – I can’t find any way to use it without holding a younger student’s hand.
>I think the make-or-break point of help is 3rd grade. Any
>parent can probably manage til the 3rd grade work; after
>that, the lack of one’s own knowledge starts to become clear.
Um, pray tell, what is so mysterious about long division as to require an expert? Are fractions beyond the grasp of the average adult? Should we, the common masses, bow down before our “well instructed math teachers” when it comes to slopes and intercepts? I could understand this if you had set the bar somewhere around deriving certain theorems in trigonometry, but setting it below even algebra seems rudely condescending.
>you can’t keep the child from asking “why�
It sounds like you wish you could. However, being an expert is no guarantee that you can answer most of the questions and only a “well instructed math teachers” would think it was. There are lots of questions about math that we simply don’t know the answers to. “Why is PI transcendental?” Well, it seems like it ought to be, based on how it is derived, but there’s no clear reason why it has to be, it just is. “Why, in flat space, must the angles of a triangle add up to 180?” “Can the Liar’s Paradox be stated in symbolic logic?”
Vital Core — My kids use Saxon for the same reason. I really liked Singapore, but they liked the independence of Saxon… and I must admit that I did too. It’s worked well for us, but I sometimes wonder if I should’ve stuck with Singapore a little longer. Curiosity, I suppose.
Rob, I agree that an average parent can handle math at least until high school, if not all the way through. My son will probably be taking Calculus at the local college for his 12th grade year, but for now Saxon and me are handling his math education just fine (since 6th grade when I pulled him out of public school). He’s using Saxon Algebra II now (9th grade)and his standardized test scores were very, very high in Math(they were slightly above average in public elementary school and fell after a year of EveryDay Math) He’s never asked a question for which I haven’t been able to answer or FIND an answer.
Lori, He’s never asked a question for which I haven’t been able to answer or FIND an answer.
My big thing is NOT answering questions; I force the student to figure it out themselves. Don’t know a word? Use the glossary or dictionary. Can’t understand it? Redo the practice problems until you do. It’s hard to do this, but well worth it.
I know this is a Singapore thread, but a word of warning for people out there about Saxon: John Saxon wrote the original texts starting with Saxon 5/4, to be started once you memorized your math facts. In other words, Saxon 5/4 was his Saxon “1″ book. But when he marketed his curriuclum to schools, they were like it’s good, but your “1″ is our 4th or 5th grade level! So he just called “1″ now 5/4 and wrote some junky K-3 books to fill in the gap so he could market it to schools.
When we first started homeschooling, I heard good things about Saxon and stared with K & 1. It was terrible! I think Saxon K-3 actually damages a kid’s understanding of math. When I learned about the history of Saxon K-3, though, I looked over 5/4 and found it totally different and refreshing. Not great, but the best I have found yet.
–Are fractions beyond the grasp of the average adult?
Yes, they are, currently. have you asked the average adult how to multiply 1/3 by 5/8ths recently? Or divide them? Seriously, most adults are incapable of solving such problems, let alone rate problems, travel problems, velocity problems, or anything that involves a fraction.
SHOULD fractions be beyond the grasp of the average adult? No. But they are.
–Should we, the common masses, bow down before our “well instructed math teachers†when it comes to slopes and intercepts?
I don’t think you understand. I’m not suggesting anyone BOW DOWN. I’m suggesting teachers RISE UP.
–I could understand this if you had set the bar somewhere around deriving certain theorems in trigonometry, but setting it below even algebra seems rudely condescending.
To whom? The teachers? It’s the teachers that are the problem. Well educated–and this is meant to be well-defined–teachers would have no problem teaching fourth graders fractions. Well educated children would grow up to be well educated adults who could teach their own children fractions. But we DO NOT HAVE THAT. So if I’m condescending to parents, I apologize. But most parents I’ve met, regardless of school type for their children, quickly agree that they are terrified of teaching their children mathematics, even fractions.
>you can’t keep the child from asking “why�
–It sounds like you wish you could.
You COMPLETELY MISUNDERSTAND ME. I love that kids ask why. I know what happens to most of them: they are criticised, ignored, made to feel stupid for not “understanding” when “understanding” means “pretend everything makes sense even though it doesn’t”. What they need are teachers that are THRILLED to answer their questions.
–However, being an expert is no guarantee that you can answer most of the questions and only a “well instructed math teachers†would think it was.
I said nothing about experts. The DEFINITION of a well instructed math teacher is DEFINED AS “CAN ANSWER NEARLY ALL QUESTIONS ACCURATELY AND AT APPROPRIATE GRADE LEVEL WITHOUT LYING AND TEACH CLARITY AND COHERENCE IN THE PROCESS.” Math makes sense, it builds on itself sensibly. Most grade school math teachers don’t know this, and don’t know how. For questions that “don’t have answers”, do you think a grade school math teachers knows which ones are which?
– There are lots of questions about math that we simply don’t know the answers to. “Why is PI transcendental?†Well, it seems like it ought to be, based on how it is derived, but there’s no clear reason why it has to be, it just is. “Why, in flat space, must the angles of a triangle add up to 180?†“Can the Liar’s Paradox be stated in symbolic logic?â€
So what? A WELL INSTRUCTED MATH TEACHER could explain THE DIFFERENCE between questions WE CAN’T ANSWER, questions A TOPOLOGIST/MEASURE THEORIST/ALGEBRAICIST/etc can answer, and questions that a 5th grader can answer. But right now, “ours is not to question why, just invert and multiply” IS WHAT GRADE SCHOOL MATH TEACHERS TEACH. They do that because THEY DO NOT KNOW WHY division of fractions MUST lead to inversion of said fractions. For them, it MIGHT AS WELL be “why is pi transcendental?”
Let me say it again: a WELL INSTRUCTED math teacher is mathematically competent and pedagogically competent, well enough to believe in sound reasoning, to teach sound reasoning, to teach that numbers make sense, that the rules make sense, and to keep offering clear, truthful explanations that are age appropriate.
Most parents can’t do that. Most teachers can’t do that. Most textbooks don’t do that.
Hello!
I am a recently elected PTO member who has just seen the standardized scores of my son’s elementary school, which are dropping. I am a former secondary school English teacher, but have no experience choosing or implementing an elementary math curriculum. What I do know is that I, and many other parents in our district, do not have confidence in TERC, which is our current curriculum. My questions for you are several:
1. Which is the best math curriculum that encompasses the elementary grades up to 8 and prepares students best for high school and college, and why?
2. How would I transition from TERC to this curriculum? I do appreciate the attempt of TERC to make more concrete the abstract math ideas, but our children have very few math facts, such as times tables, etc. incorporated into the curriculum, and it is beginning to show.
3. How can I pitch this to our budget committee, which is, like many others, overburdened, and how may I present this change to teachers so that they feel they are not being asked to re-invent the wheel or erase their efforts to the TERC curriculum? In short, I would like to present compelling evidence that it works and is worth the trouble.
I suppose what I am asking is how to transition, pedagogically, practically, and efficiently, from a curriculum that is too conceptual and impractical in its lack of foundations to one that has it all.
Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Liz