Excited about Singapore Math

I received my Singapore Math books in the mail yesterday, and am getting very excited about teaching my kids math. This is a popular program among homeschoolers, which is telling when you consider that home schooled kids consistently score higher on standardized tests than do public school students in our country.

In fact, the country of Singapore once again scored number one for the 2003 TIMSS (a study based in Massachusetts that looks at how countries score in math achievement.) In Singapore, they use the Singapore Math Curriculum.

The materials look very thorough, and they move nicely from the concrete to the conceptual. For each unit of study I will, as always with good teaching, start with a constructivist approach, and then move beyond to direct instruction.

The kids' textbooks and workbooks are appealing-looking, and the home guides are great. Instead of buying the teacher's guides, I bought the home schooler's guides, because they're more oriented toward one-on-one teaching.

Someday I hope my district decides to learn from homeschoolers. Now that would be a wise move. I'd be so impressed. But they're not there yet. Imagine--best practices from home schoolers. They're a wealth of knowledge.

I've resigned myself to the time and expense (mostly time) it will take to home school my kids in math. The reason it's okay with me is because in the bigger picture, they're getting a great education. I shall always hold these things dear to my heart:

1. Reader's Workshop (language-intensive reading program)

2. Writer's Workshop (thought-provoking constructivist-based writing program that produces middle school and even high school level writing in an elementary school).

3. Open Circle (social skills program that has served my children well.) To find out something wonderful that happened to my daughter in Open Circle, read my story called "Outing My Kids." This story was published in Exceptional Parent magazine. I've thought to send this article to Wellesley, but haven't gotten around to it.

I'm thinking that I probably won't need to say anything at all to my principal or teacher(s) in the next few years. That's because TERC Investigations and Singapore Math can reside nicely side by side in my son's brain. He's a smart kid. I've already begun to tell him that he can do math the TERC way at school, and any way he wants to at home. He understands this.

He also understands that the school can't be perfect. He's used to this, as we've had such discussions before. When the school nurse was teaching the old food pyramid, I helped all of my kids understand that the food pyramid was faulty, but that it wasn't the nurse's fault--she was required by the state to teach it.

So they knew to answer the questions on the test the way the teacher wanted. They knew to spit back that fats and sweets are bad, and that you should have ten zillion servings of carbs per day. (Okay that's an exaggeration, but it really was wacky.)

And they also learned from me the truth about food balance. They can live with this dichotomy and still respect their teachers and school.

Another topic I discuss with all my kids is the difference between education and indoctrination. Education allows for critical thinking, and arises from a teacher who thinks critically. Indoctrination is a replacement for thinking. The artificial divide between "good foods" and "bad foods" is an example of indoctrination instead of critical thinking. Another is the teaching that all drugs are bad, without mention that heroin is used as a base in some pharmaceuticals.

They can live with this too. They're smart kids. They've learned from me to be active, savvy consumers of their own education.

I think my child will benefit from TERC Investigations. It's just that it's not math. Rather, it's an interesting extended language program. We can laugh about it at home. And my child will be laughing all the way to higher mathematics.

I'm so glad I started my kids young in handling dichotomy, in thinking critically about their school environment, and in discerning between indoctrination and education. It's the reason that doing Singapore Math at home, while doing TERC Investigations at school, will work nicely for my remaining child in elementary school.

I feel bad for those parents who don't have the time, courage, or background to tutor their kids. I know that lots of parents are paying a bundle to get formal tutoring for their kids. Others can't afford it. No Rich Child Left Behind.

It's nice that I'm a licensed elementary teacher with a 7-9 math extension. However, home schoolers produce high-achieving students with no teaching license at all. I'm hoping other parents will take the advice to heart that if you want to home school your kids, all day or in just one subject, you can figure it out.

I call this home schooling instead of tutoring because tutoring implies the kid needs extra help. Home schooling implies more of a full curriculum, and that's what I've chosen. That's why I selected Singapore Math, which is a far cry from raw drill. In fact, its biggest criticism is that for some kids it doesn't offer enough drill, but that can be supplemented.

It's interesting that in Singapore, the kids do receive drill, but it's after school. I call that well-rounded!

Tomorrow I'll go shopping for my manipulatives. My list is about 30 items long, and includes metric weights, base ten blocks, linking cubes, hundreds chart, place value cards, and much more.

Redundant? Nope. The idea is to get them ahead of where they are in school, then keep them there. That's why I'm teaching my middle schoolers, too, even though they're not getting TERC Investigations anymore. They're just plain behind in math, and that's more the fault of the NJ State Standards than anything else. The New Jersey state standards are heavily constructivist-based.

Besides, there are problems with what is known as reactive teaching.

Actually, according to the Federal Department of Education, it's my fault my kids are behind in math. According to our government, the education of our children is the ultimate responsibility of the parents. So I should have been getting them tutoring earlier, like some other parents I know have done. But I was trusting my school. Silly me.

When my kids get to college, I want them to have all majors open to them, not just the ones that are light on the math requirement. That's my bottom line.

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Moran is also LensMaster of the teens and tweens lens and the owner of the teens and tweens message board on Yahoo.