AKM101 Lesson 4

We had four lessons and for the next few weeks we will be having online lessons. Today, we re-examine the issues of teaching mathemeatics versus teaching children. I am glad to hear many views including if the national examination assess good habits of mind and spirit of innovation and enterprise. It is popular rhetoric that all the things outlines in various initiatives are fine and good but the examinations do not value them and hence teachers do not place emphasis on them. That is what this course is about - for the participants to re-examine this beyond the popular rhetoric, to reconsider one's present point of view and points of views of the other participants and to examine the issues more deeply. Thus two questions - one, how to help students reach a certain level of achievement that will allow them to progress towards becoming a productive citizen of the country and the world and, two, as teachers, should we go all out to ensure highest grade possible, even at the expense of teaching the child values and developing his or her confidence to face the world or moulding their personality as a well-adjusted youngsters?

AKM101 Lesson 1

We dealt with recent initiatives in primary mathematics. Today I used two case studies to get students to think how to bring to life words in initiative documents such as the curriculum document. The first case study was a problem that is different yet connect to a pattern that is taught in the curriculum. In the curriculum, children deal with patterns such as ABCDABCDABCD... type patterns where they are expected to be able to find the n th letter in the pattern. In this lesson, we did a very different pattern. Students were asked to propose solution methods and evaluate if the methods are generalizable or not. The second case study was on teaching area through problem solving, using a method that is commen in the textbooks. The students looked at the curriculum document and were asked to think about the rationale for teaching mathematics. Students were asked to make tetrominoes and compare them. Along the way, the basic concept of area and deeper concepts of area emerged. I was excited because the students were giving their views and opinions and asking questions on issues we discussed. I am looking forward to the next lesson. The students were asked to think about what is mathematics teaching all about according to the official documents and according to their own views - what it is and what it should be.

DCM200 Lesson 1

Teaching of Area. I tried to show how teaching through problem solving can be done for students in Primary 3. We did Tetrominoes (Make different shapes using exactly four square tiles.), Quadrilaterals (Make different quadrilaterals using exactly three square tiles and two half-square tiles), Area is Five Problems (Use the geoboard to make quadrilaterals of area 5 square units.). We ended by exploring the Pick's Theorem using the findings of the last problem. I wished I had more time for the students to explore the relationship between area and number of 'dots'.

Las Vegas Lessons

Latest: The slides for the keynote lecture for National Conference for Singapore Math Strategies are already available at www.singaporemathz4kidz.blogspot.com Other slides will be available at math.nie.edu.sg/T3 soon.

Riviera Hotel and Casino will be my classroom for four days. I will be teaching classes at the National Conference on Singapore Math Strategies for Grades K-6 with five other American teacher trainers. Several teachers are also sharing their experiences with the participants. I was told that there are 800+ participants from all but four states in the US with California having more than 100 representatives. There are also about 10 international participants from places as diverse as the Uganda, Mexico and the Philippines.

On Monday, I kicked the conference off with a keynote session with Char Forsten. The session is titled Singapore Math: Where East Meet West. I gave the audience the context in which mathematics is taught in Singapore. In particular, I touched on the emphasis on challenging problems in the PSLE, and the fact that most schools have their own problem-solving programme to supplement textbooks which focus on developing strong basics. I also spoke on high parental expectations and LSP and Foundation Mathematics as safety nets to make sure every student get help so that they do not fall too far behind. Many Singapore teachers conduct remedial programme in one form or another - some schools have structured remedial while others do them as and when the need arises. Finally, I touched on teacher education, before they enter the teaching service and when they are in service. I raised the point that perhaps it is possible for teachers to acquire pedagogical content knowledge and content knowledge by working through the student textbook.

Over the four days, I taught classes on a variety of topics ranging from word problems to visualization to lesson study and more. The participants were enthusiatic and appreciative despite the relatively large class size. On the first day, all the three classes I taught (visualization, questioning technique and challenging word problems) had about 200 people.

I will write about these classes. I will upload the slides for the keynote lecture as well as for the different classes at mathz4kidz.com and at math.nie.edu.sg/T3.

Other than this blog where I talk about the lessons I teach, you may go to http://www.singaporemathz4kidz.blogspot.com/ for general discussion on Singapore Math. There is a video gallery here. http://www.askyeapbanhar.com/ is where I post responses to questions I receive through e-mails. If you are interested in lesson study, go to http://www.singaporelessonstudy.blogspot.com/

Some Lesson Ideas for AYG2009

There is a sample lesson plan on incorporating scoring in diving mathematics lessons. See http://www.adrianbruce.com/maths/diving/diving_math_lesson.htm I think scoring in diving is especially useful for Primary 4 topic on operations involving decimals and Primary 5 topic on average.

NSM101 Lesson on Probability

I taught this lesson in Manila to a group of high school teachers using the New Syllabus Mathematics. The problem posed is to find the probability of drawing two cards with the same number, one from a stack of cards labelled 1 to 4 and another from another stack of cards, also labelled 1 to 4. Using the responses from eight groups, we were able to solve this problem that involved combined events using the knowledge of basic probability of single event. The responses included the use of listing, tree diagrams and table. I was quite satisfied we managed to use the responses to explain the multiplication rule.

Education in the US

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

Last week I went to Berkeley County, West Virginia, to begin an open, honest conversation about education reform.I wanted to hear ideas about how we can accomplish President Obama's goal of providing every child in America a complete and competitive education, from cradle through career.As we prepare for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, I want to hear from classroom teachers and other educators, parents and students, business people and citizens. What's working, and what's not? What do we need to do that we're not doing, and what do we need to stop doing - or do differently?

In the coming weeks, I will ask questions here. Topics will include raising standards, strengthening teacher quality, using data to improve learning, and turning around low-performing schools. I will be reading what you say. So will others here at the U.S. Department of Education.Today, I want to start with a simple set of questions: Many states in America are independently considering adopting internationally-benchmarked, college and career-ready standards. Is raising standards a good idea? How should we go about it?

Let the conversation begin!

Arne Duncan