Friday, July 9, 2010

Join us for our upcoming workshop in San Francisco on Aug. 28!

Today's blog question:

Q: What about the child in my class who says math class is “too easy” ?


A: Suppose a child (let’s say it’s a girl) is a quick learner, and interprets her speed as proof that the work is too easy. We would allow her to skip some of the seatwork, but still have her join in lessons that are done together as a class – group lessons, games, and mental math. In our experience, the group activities are not boring, and they increase her mental math flexibility and her visual understanding of mathematics. If you then give your whole class some time to work on class exercises or workbook pages (seatwork time), she might be excused from those.

In order to be excused, however, we ask the student to do a few workbook exercises correctly and with good form, after which she is excused from the rest of the unit or part of a unit. (Many students think they have mastered a concept as soon as they have a rudimentary understanding of it!)

We use various Singapore Math books like “Intensive Practice” to find extensions, puzzles, riddles and hard word problems for these children to work on during seat work time. The problems we find are more difficult questions on the SAME topic with the rest of the class, just with more depth and complexity. We allow any student access to these challenges, but find the fast finishers are the ones who most enjoy them.

The guideline here is that we do NOT take these students on to the next topic, or on to the next grade level, which can lead to rushing, worksheet-burnout and incomplete understanding.