De-mystifying math

Singapore method helps students learn at Capitol School

Co-teacher Bethany Spencer, top, helps students Carla Feige, 8, left, Natdrick Jones, 8, and Jadyn Fording, 7, right, with their math at the Capitol School on Thursday. The school is using “Singapore Math” in celebration of “Mighty Multiplication Week.” Singapore has some of the top math students in the world and the students at the Capitol School are now using the country’s math system.

Dusty Compton | The Tuscaloosa News
Last Modified: Thursday, February 14, 2013 at 11:33 p.m.

TUSCALOOSA | A group of four 8-year-old Capitol School students sat at a small round table Thursday, laughing, smiling and arranging multicolored chips with numbers into two sets.


Capitol School

-The private school offers pre-kindergarten through 12th grade and has 150 students from 62 countries.
-The school has 12 full-time teachers and numerous part-time teachers who come in to teach subjects in which they have expertise, including German, Spanish, piano, violin, technology and art. Students at Capitol School begin studying foreign languages at the age of 2.
-Capitol School is not year-round, but it does offer summer school that its students are encouraged to attend.
-The school’s student teacher ratio is 12-to-1.
-The goals of the school are to be ranked among the best in the world, to become Alabama’s first charter school and to be a model for public schools that shows them how students can flourish if funding is allocated to the right places.

Source: Melanie Spencer, lead teacher at Capitol School

In the first set, they laid out three green 1,000-point chips, seven red 100-point chips, two blue 10-point chips and four green 1-point chips. They then repeated the process, this time placing the exact number and types of chips on the other side of the table.

The math problem they were given, which was written on a piece of paper, was what is 3,724 multiplied by two? After the students were done placing exactly 3,724 points of chips on the table twice, they added the chips up and told their teacher, Melanie Spencer, their answer.

“It’s 7,448,” said Ezekiel O’Connor, a third-grader.

Spencer, a lead teacher at Capitol School, said she was teaching students that multiplying is simply an easier and quicker way of adding.

Students in groups around the room worked out the same problem. Instead of using chips, they used beaded necklaces, pegs in a board, paper and their fingers.

The method of learning is called “Singapore Math,” which is the national math curriculum used in Singapore.

Fourth- and eighth-grade students in Singapore have ranked No. 1 in the world in math since 1995, according to a Trends in International Mathematics and Science study conducted by the International Association for Evaluation of Educational Achievement. The association is an independent, international cooperative of national research institutions and government research agencies.

Singapore math slims down the content packed into traditional math curriculums and focuses on students mastering a few topics, said Barbara Roundtree, director of Capitol School. She said it employs detailed instruction, questions, problem-solving and visual and hands-on aides such as blocks, chips, cards and bar charts.

Students being taught Singapore math do not move on to another math topic until they have thoroughly learned the topic they’re on, she said.

“This approach gives students a sold 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,” she said.

Roundtree said Singapore math is the math curriculum used at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., where the daughters of President Barack Obama attend and where the daughter of former president Bill Clinton once attended.

Capitol School — an international private school — spent thousands of dollars adopting Singapore’s math curriculum, Roundtree said.

After a year of research and training the school’s faculty on how to teach it, the Singapore math method has been implemented at the school. Teachers say it was worth the investment.

“It builds confidence,” Spencer said. “They feel that they can do math. Look at their smiling faces. No one’s crying when I say, ‘Let’s do math.’ ”

Lawson Turner, an 8-year-old at the school, ran up to Spencer and begged for a math problem.

She asked him what’s nine multiplied by nine. He held up his fingers and folded his ninth finger on his right hand. He then counted the number of fingers to the left of his folded finger and counted the single finger to the right of his folded finger. Counting eight fingers to the left of his folded finger and one finger to the right of his folded finger, he yelled out “81!”

“I don’t even need my fingers for the answer anymore because it’s stuck in my head!” Lawson yelled.

Spencer said Singapore math relies on problem solving and higher-order thinking, not just numbers and word problems. She said it’s about figuring out how math is done.

“We start with students using visual materials that they can understand concretely instead of conceptually,” she said. “We start them with concrete materials that they can relate to. Then we move to math problems using pictures and then abstract. That’s when the Singapore math really helps them because it helps them see that all three are connected.”

Spencer said Singapore math aligns with the state curriculum and Common Core, which is a new national curriculum that will be implemented at every public school in the country next school year.

Reach Jamon Smith at or 205-722-0204.


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