Saturday, February 16, 2008

Number of Pages
in a Math Book
in Singapore grade 1

I really love this small chunk of comments from the Blog Kitchen Table Math.

Catherine Johnson said...
I like this passage:

The new Focal Points are also likely to cause a major shift in the content in textbooks. "There are 750-page math textbooks," Fennell said (NCTM President Skip Fennell). Faced with hundreds of state standards around the country, he said, publishers decided to try to cover everything that might be taught.

He and others would like to see textbooks get down to the essentials. Wilson said the sixth-grade math textbook for Singapore is 36 pages long, and Singapore scores highest on math exams worldwide.

"You have to have a car to carry around a textbook in the United States," he said.
January 2, 2007 6:52 AM

Catherine Johnson said...
Unfortunately, this passage is incorrect.

Primary Mathematics 6A: 96 pages
Primary Mathematics 6B: 120 pages

Primary Mathematics Workbook 6A: 96 pages
Primary Mathematics Workbook 6B: 112 pages

That's 400 pages, and there are no photographs of penguins diving off a snow cliff.

January 2, 2007 7:34 AM
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On the brighter side the Singapore Books are only 7.5 by 10.25 inches and soft-cover so they are a lot lighter in weight than the big books. Also the workbooks have space for writing so there is useful white space.

Singpore Mathematics 1A workbook is 158 pages in size.

Singpore Mathematics 1B workbook is 176 pages in size.

These are first grade workbooks the kids write in the books.

Here are the Contents of the workbooks for first grade in Singapore:
Followed by (the number of exercises) devoted to the topic

Contents of Workbook 1A:
Numbers to 10 (4) .;. Number Bonds (7) .;. Addition (8) .;.

Subtraction (12) .;. Ordinal Numbers (3) .;. Reviews (3) .;.

Numbers to 20 (15) .;. Reviews (2) .;. Shapes (6) .;.

Length (3) .;. Weight (3) .;. Review (2)

Contents of Workbook 1B:
Comparing Numbers (6) .;. Graphs (3) .;. Numbers to 40 (23) .;.

review (1) .;. Multiplication (7) .;. Review (3) .;.

Division (4) .;. Haves and Quarters (3) .;. Time (2) .;.

Review (1) .;. Numbers to 100 (21) .;. Review (1) .;.

Money (4) .;. Review (2)

There you have it the workbook topics for Singapore in First grade.

Now if your child is advanced you can use Challenging Word problems grade one (137 pages),

Need some review or more repetition try Extra Practice grade one (96 pages).

Or perhaps Intensive Practice 1B for both some challenge and extra practice (106 pages)

Yes those are the facts of the flat world.

While our kids have been having discussions in math appreciation and attempting to discover math on their own usually unsuccessfully, others are doing arithmetic.
If you are thinking mindless drill and kill think again, pick up a Challenging Word Problems grade 6 and hand it to a pre-Calculus or Calculus student and see if they can do the problems and whether they think the problems are mindless drill and kill.

The rest of the world still believes that mathematical literacy comes through mastering Arithmetic - then Algebra - and Trigonometry. Statistics and Probability
come later as does calculus. { Note: the data shows their belief is correct and ours is NOT. }

Singapore introduces real algebra in grade 6 and in grade 8 Trig is used.
Because students in Singapore are taught the bar model and proportions to mastery the entry to real computational algebra is not a big deal.

In Seattle Rosalind Wise math program director believes that all children can be successful in 8th grade algebra of course it will be conceptually based not computationally based. It seems SPS children have little number sense so computationally based algebra is out of the question. WOW!!! an SPS high school math adoption is coming -- there is an impossible task - select a textbook for all the high school students in the district that will prepare them for collegiate mathematics in just four years when they enter high school with very few actual math skills.

The question is quite simple: Is the Washington Legislature going to allow Dr Bergeson to take us further down a failed philosophical math path or are we going to adopt international standards?

To improve a system requires the intelligent application of relevant statistics.
The statistics are screaming at us, will we intelligently apply them or continue the OSPI decade of math disaster.

2 comments:

  1. Have u try the
    Math study online bookstore Cocomartini.com

    http://www.cocomartini.com

    I get all my textbooks for this semester from this bookstore. All are brand new textbooks and half price discount textbooks and cheap textbooks.

    Good luck and wish some help.

    hehe ^_^

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is clearly shameless advertising by Jessica -- I will leave it up if no one complains.

    Dan

    ReplyDelete