Making Math Lessons as Easy as 1, Pause, 2, Pause …

By the time they get to kindergarten, children in this well-to-do suburb already know their numbers, so their teachers worried that a new math program was too easy when it covered just 1 and 2 – for a whole week.

"Talk about the number 1 for 45 minutes?" said Chris Covello, who teaches 16 students ages 5 and 6. "I was like, I don’t know. But then I found you really could. Before, we had a lot of ground to cover, and now it’s more open-ended and gets kids thinking."

The slower pace is a cornerstone of the district’s new approach to teaching math, which is based on the national math system of Singapore and aims to emulate that country’s success by promoting a deeper understanding of numbers and math concepts. Students in Singapore have repeatedly ranked at or near the top on international math exams since the mid-1990s.

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/education/01math.html?_r=1&hpw