Making Math Manageable

My homeschooled children and I heard a story on Public Radio last year about a math curriculum that was fun called "Singapore Math". The kids suggested that we use that to learn math in "our" school. They said that they didn't like the way we were learning math. It was boring. I purchased it (it is not expensive for the homeschool version) and the kids love it. My daughter heard the ad for this show today and said "I don't hate math" and I thought "Hurrah"! I love math and I'm glad that my kids are starting to appreciate it.
Gretchen

During the process of chosing a private high school for our daughter in 2004, I gleened a bit of knowledge from one of the scholl Deans. When I inquired about the drop-out rate, the Dean explained to us that they found Math scores to be an excellent predicter of success in all curriculums within school. Our daugther had received 98/97 scores on her math/english placement tests so we felt confortable that she had not been set up for failure. She went on to graduate with honors, writes at the graduate school level and is attending Art school. Hooray for Math.

This was an excellent program!

Sometimes the problem is a teacher who does not understand math him/herself.

Sometimes the textbook is very bad.  When my son was studying high school algebra, he had a textbook that was so bad that I could not always figure out what a problem was asking, and I have a BS in math.  When I complained to the teacher, he admitted it was bad, but there were several years before the math department was slated to get new books.  I bought a better text to supplement the material at home.

In my own school experience, one fabulous 4th grade teacher had us learn multiplication tables with math bees.  Like a spelling bee we had two teams and each person would recite the table for one number (3's, 4's, etc) up to 12's.  When a mistake was made, that person sat down and the next one took it on.  There was competition to get it right, and we not only said our own number set, but were also hearing the other numbers - drilling it in.

I was inspired to study mathematics in college after hearing a lecture in my high school that described different forms of infinity. That stimullated my interest! There was an added bonus for me as a slow reader - reasoning to find the answers was far easier than reading thousands of pages and memorizing facts.

Now, as a volunteer, I teach adults for the GED and I am amazed at how poor some of their early education has been.  I had not taught before, but in working with my new “students” (usually one on one) I have found that visual aids can be a real help in getting the basics across.