Life long sharing . . .

Was checking Ling’s school Weekly Summary Report, and her worksheets. Saw the Mental Arithmetics worksheets she had done.

Eh! Not bad wor.. The teacher do teach formula, like +4=+5-1. Not bad at all. …

Ya, I recalled in the Parents Interview, Teacher Beau feedback that Ling was doing well, have correct hands posture. They did explain that the progress is slow because only once a week, and as they are just starting the class, so teacher will do one-to-one teaching to help those children to pick up. And since this is just additional, non-school-syllabus kind of thing, so no homework on this so far.

Now I compared the Global Maths, ya, it’s 2 hours each lesson, and as beginner, we are advised to come twice a week, and there are homeworks to practise what they’ve learn.

Signed up the girls for one term. Since Ling likes it (even the one in school), and they have been really bored at home after class, and so coincident also the time slot fits our schedule, and most importantly,…  I managed to collect some funding from daddy, after nagging him that the girls can learn and pick up in their enrichment classes, why not let them try while they still have free time, some more the center is quite near my place, I don’t mind sending, bla bla bla….

Finally daddy bought in. So there they go, the two girls went for their Global Maths class happily.

As Ling learns in school before, so there is no problem for her. Some more the teacher is teaching 1-to-1 in a way.

For Ying, she was first asked to do some writing exercise, write from 1 to 0, before they started her on the Abacus. They show her how to hold the pencil, the position for the hands and how to hold the Abacus, the way to clear the beads… Then they started teaching her the action for +1, -1, +2, -2, … +5, -5 using the Abacus. Ying was so excited when finally she could do with the Abacus for the first time in her life.

Then they started her on exercise to tell a number from a picture of beads. Like, a bead above the line is 5;  continue counting whatever beads below the line to get the number. Ying was sigh and cautious.  And the teacher did the exercise with her using Mandarin.

Ok. Ying can recite numbers in Mandarin. But then she doesn’t know 九 is equivalent to 9; and 七 is equivalent to 7. So she stopped after telling the correct answer to teacher, as she didn’t know which numeric to write into the book. … In a way, it’s good also for Ying to pick up numbers in Chinese.

And one thing I noticed, they didn’t really teach what is plus 加, what is minus 减 ; no explaining of plus is adding and minus is taking away. Luckily Ying is already familiar with that. May be this is the first lesson and they will come to that later. I am not sure. Now I am really curious how they are going to teach multiply and divide, as I asked this question to the wife of the founder, she assured me  that they will explain first what is multiply and divide before hitting the Abacus. ..  will see..

Ok, some follow up story about the visit to Global Art / Global Maths Open Day last Sunday.

Actually I roughly know about this program a year plus ago, when I had the chance to meet the old founder who was looking for franchising partner at that time.

So last Sunday I was thinking to understand more in details about this Mental Arithmetic class for my girls, so there was a change in the perspective.

I met the wife of another founder. Well, first impression, she is a bit too proud. 😛 Sorry. I don’t mean to say bad. May be she is too confident with her product, or may be the way I put the questions a bit .. mm.. too straight forward, that made her feel challenged.

Anyway, I asked for things like, whether it’s solely teaching calculation given the formula and sign (+, -, x, /), not really explaining the mathematics concept like what is +, what is x, and she quickly replied, “Yes, yes, of course teacher will teach before they proceed to use abacus to do the exercise. But we don’t teach application 应用题. We are more on calculate by heart 心算 as fast as possible.”

As they have their own syllabus (10 levels) and exams to follow, so I told her that Ling’s school did teach a little basic Abacus. Then she gave Ling a quick test, and show me that what Ling learn was just the very very fundamental in their syllabus, which can be covered in their first two lessons.

And there was a demo on site where a student was placed in front of a computer, which flip three 3 digit numbers real fast, and she was asked to tell the sum of the three 3 digits number. In less than a minute she was able to tell the correct answer. It was amazing, just like one story I heard from the old founder before, a parent who have a food stall in Seremban, sent her daughter to this Mental Arithmetics, and the daughter can help calculate the amount a customer needs to pay for food in split second.

But then still… “can calculate fast” is not all what Mathematics is about, right. . .

She also explained that they use rules like when there is not enough bead to do +4, they teach the children about the rule: +4 = 5 -1.  Ya, this is one of the way to do addition as well. So,  to me, meaning they are teaching rules and helping children to visualize all the number relationship and the arithmetics.