US schools adopt ‘Singapore maths’ to improve student performance
American schools are adopting the method, which emphasises problem solving over rote memorisation, based on test score successes
Imagine you’re a character in a maths problem. You have three platters, but two cakes. All three platters need to have the same amount of cake. How would you split it?
Without even saying the word “divide”, a group of about 20 teachers from private schools spanning the US states of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia stacked cubes and folded notecards to find solutions. The answer? Two-thirds of a cake per platter. But the problem doesn’t end there.
A kindergarten to grade 12 girls’ school in Owings Mills, Maryland, recently hosted a two-day public workshop on Singapore maths. The Garrison Forest School is expanding the curriculum through eighth grade this year after seeing success with the teaching method in its lower school over the past two years.
Other Maryland schools – private, charter and public – have also incorporated the teaching style into their curriculums in the hopes of emulating Singapore’s three decades of success.
Singapore maths was developed by the Southeast Asian country’s Ministry of Education decades ago. It’s a teaching style that avoids rote memorisation and focuses on a slower learning approach to teach mathematical concepts, allowing students to understand them in greater detail.
Everybody can be good at maths. It’s a matter of how you’re taught