Making Math Lessons as Easy as 1, Pause, 2, Pause ...
From the article
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In contrast to the most common math programs in the United States, Singapore math devotes more time to fewer topics, to ensure that children master the material through detailed instruction, questions, problem solving, and visual and hands-on aids like blocks, cards and bar charts. Ideally, they do not move on until they have thoroughly learned a topic.
Principals and teachers say that slowing down the learning process gives students a solid math foundation upon which to build increasingly complex skills, and makes it less likely that they will forget and have to be retaught the same thing in later years.
And with Singapore math, the pace can accelerate by fourth and fifth grades, putting children as much as a year ahead of students in other math programs as they grasp complex problems more quickly.
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Wow, putting students a year ahead. Sounds like a wonderful program which we should look at.
Of course it didn't happen, Singapore Math didn't even make the Cave Creek Unified K-8 Math Textbook Adoption Committee initial evaluation list, despite the fact that Singapore Math is a Core Knowledge Foundation recommendation.
Core Knowledge Foundation Math Recommendation
What is left on the list (for k-6) is three programs that covers too many topics, are untested, and don't require mastery. These three programs will work great with Smartboards and come with many professional development tools to make lives easier for the teachers and the administrators, because as we know in Cave Creek Unified, its all about putting the leadership and the staff above the students (as we saw with the budget cuts and school closings).
We are so happy that our district will be stuck with these middling textbooks for the next 5 to 10 years, in which time, as history has shown us, almost all of the district's leadership will be long gone, and our community will be left holding this giant bag of mediocrity.
Maybe the governing board will come to its senses and demand that the administration actually put in place a math program that will allow our students to excel at an international level, regardless of how difficult the program is to implement.
Yeah, right.
You really do a disservice to the community that you report on by operating in a vacuum. Since the district knows who you are anyway (as you have stated), why not use your real name, call the curriculum people, and interview them on why Singapore Math was nixed. It may be your favorite program, but the net has plenty of negatives listed for it as well. At least do some reporting on the reasons that CCUSD did not pick it other than just giving your opinion about district mediocrity.
ReplyDeleteThere is no vacuum. Through one of our members, the district and committee leaders were contacted (not anonymously), input was given, and even an offer to help facilitate a visit to a school using Singapore Math was made.
ReplyDeleteThis and subsequent requests for information from the committee and the administration have been ignored.
The disservice is the handpicked, no outsiders, opaque, rushed, textbook publisher driven, and working parent unfriendly K-8 Textbook Adoption Committee which is on the path to extending the district's medicority.
Have your requests for information been anonymous? If so, I think it is district policy that would have to be changed to answer you.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I am curious as to why the district nixed Singapore Math (the reasons that they will give, not your opinion about the handpicking, no outsiders, yada yada yada). It seems like a program with merit. At the very least, they should be able to give a coherent answer as to why it is not under consideration. If they can't, then I don't see the problem with making assumptions about the motivation behind the decision. I just like to see both sides of an issue and your blog often reads one sided.
I won't be the one to ask the question, however. I do not live in the district anymore. Maybe someone out there can ask the question at the next board meeting, or wherever appropriate.
Oct. 1 at 9:19am. I have to say, I have sat on 2 District committees. They were a joke. They are lead by District employees. If you ask for additional information, you never get it. The only information you get is what they want you to get. I completely wish it wasn't that way, but the truth is the truth. And as a member of a coule of these committees, I am talking from experience within CCUSD.
ReplyDelete