People always seem to think that Singapore math is about Drill and Kill, and that therefore that is what the people who oppose the reform math must want. I have used Singapore math for three years now. I consider myself an “afterschooler”, a person who homeschools a bit after school to fill gaps in the public school curriculum. Singapore Math is not about kill and drill. I think this review of Singapore math meshes with my experience and is very succinct.
“Singapore Math books are probably more resistant to mis-teaching than many curricula, since they are almost self-teaching books. They are less spiraling than most American texts (which is to say, they expect you to have mastered the previous work and only spend about a week on review at the beginning of each year), and the grade level tends to be off by one from American texts (that is, the Singapore 5th grade corresponds roughly to American 6th grade). There is some natural spiraling for computation, as they gradually make the problems larger.
The Singapore books fall closer to the traditional camp than the reform camp, in that all the students write are numbers and units, but they do emphasize understanding in a way that is missing from both drill-and-kill books (like Saxon) and reform books (like Everyday Math). That is, the Singapore books provide a lot of multi-step story problems that require mathematical reasoning and not just “this is the addition chapter, so we have to add something”. The story problems get gradually more complex through the series, so it might be hard for a student who has never done any mathematical thinking to jump into the Singapore series, even if they have mastered the algorithms of addition and multiplication.”
The beauty of the Singapore system is that it is so adaptable to different kids. Many in the homeschooling community like it because if you have a kid who gets math easily and doesn’t need a lot of repetition you can fly through it, if you have a kid who loves to go deeper there are additional word problems and materials available, and if you have a kid who needs more explanation, those materials are available as well. There is even a companion computer game for fun and practice. I love this curriculum! It is short and sweet.I have been meticulously been going through both the original TIMSS document and the Bellevue-Boeing standards mapping document on the Bellevue web site.
Singapore math has hit every gap between what is going on in my child’s classroom and the TIMMS standards. Also, it only takes us 10-15 minutes per night. I have also given my child the California end of year assessments, and my child has passed (understood everything assessed) with flying colors.
Singapore works! No kill and drill, and Singapore’s concrete-pictorial-abstract framework along with its scope and sequence that is well aligned with world standards makes it absolutely coherent and understandable.
