Monday, July 9th, 2007: Visit to Cedar Primary School

On Monday we met at 8:30 am to go to a school called Cedar Primary School, a progressive school with 920 students. Cedar is involved in an education partnership with a school in China, and is in the beginning stages of using Lesson Study as part of the professional development of teachers. The principal (since 2004),Shirley Ho-Woo. is a former superintendent who is a strong believer in "human dynamics.” She will be retiring at the end of the school year (November, 2007) and would like to leave a permanent legacy.

When we got off the bus we were greeted by Shirley and Elaine, the P5 HA (Primary 5 high ability track math teacher) and mathematics teacher expert in the school. We met in a well air-conditioned conference room, decorated with student artwork, and covered with awards. The Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) gives yearly awards to schools to recognize academic excellence. The school also has its own internal awards.

The school has been in existence since 1957, but 2 years ago it moved into a brand new building which has the best IT program in the country. In fact, next year they will be opening 6 distance-learning classrooms and will be implementing several types of techno-education. Cedar is also the leading school in Singapore for Lego and Robotics and is implementing a “school within a school” idea where different-aged children come together to learn. We also learned about the education system in Singapore: one of the new initiatives of the MOE is to “Teach Less, Learn More,” to lead children to discover the objectives of a lesson through exploration and investigation. The Mathematics Curriculum Framework consists of several categories with problem solving at the center. The principal also shared the importance of mentoring teachers. New teachers have 20% of their time free to use to learn and improve their teaching—they design their own learning. All the teachers also have time each week to get together with teachers at the same grade level. Teachers attend local and overseas conferences supported by the MOE.

The school year starts in January. There are four 10-week quarters, and they get the months of December and June off. The children (starting in 3rd grade) are separated into different tracks—what they call HAMALA—higher ability (42 children per class), middle ability (40 children per class), and lower ability (25 children per class). The children in lower ability classrooms are supposed to have the most capable teachers and more instruction time. Mathematics class-time per week consists of 12 periods, each lasting half hour. The tracks for primary school are determined by student achievement on exams and teacher observation, and they currently keep children of each track together for all their classes, except for “mother-tongue.” Each child goes to language instruction according to his/her home-spoken language (Chinese, Tamil or Malay). Children with a mother-tongue that is not one of the languages taught at school are allowed to select the language of their choice. If, after a good try, they are not able to keep up with the language, they are exempted from the “mother-tongue” requirement. Next year they will establish a more elaborate “banding” scheme—children will be tracked for each subject according to their achievement in that subject (subject-banding).

The first class we observed was a high ability (achievement seems a better word) Primary 4 class doing a lesson on adding and subtracting decimals taught by Vivian Chiau. We received a lesson plan and sat in the back of the classroom. The teacher first used an interactive powerpoint presentation and projector to review addition and subtraction of decimals, lining up the decimal points, and adding and subtracting normally. She was very precise in the language she used. For example, she talked about subtracting hundredths from hundredths, tenths from tenths, etc. She reminded the children that only decimals of the same value can be added, and that, while using the addition/subtraction algorithms, we add/subtract from right to left. Many of the children were quick at the computations; there were a couple of children who were doing the computations mentally. Many hands went up within seconds after the teacher projected the numbers to be added or subtracted (they were asked to raise their hands when done). There was some use of the words “minusing” and “plusing” as verbs during the lesson.

The teacher asked questions throughout the review. For example, for the exercise “3.8 minus 1.26,” she asked “Why do we need a zero after 8?” Other questions included “Is one hundredth enough to subtract 3 hundredths (then she said that “we need to borrow from the 9”)?” and “Do you understand?” When a student gave the wrong answer for the exercise “subtract 2.03 from 10.91” (8.87) the teacher asked the class “Did you get 8.87?” and many of them responded “no” and gave the correct answer.

After a few addition and subtraction exercises (in order of increasing sophistication) the teacher gave the students very specific instructions for an application activity. Each small group was tasked with determining which of two grocery stores would give the “best deal” for a list of items needed for a party. The maximum budget was $200, but they were asked to find the best deal they could. One representative from each group very quickly and efficiently went up to receive the materials. The students were enthralled with the activity and started finding prices on the two store circulars right away. They distributed the work among the people in the groups and collaborated well. They spent approximately 40 minutes working on this task.

There were no calculators. The students made long lists of prices and added them using the (common U.S.) addition algorithm. More than one child in some groups performed the addition in order to compare with the others in the group.

Many of the students were multiplying decimals, although the lesson was supposed to be reviewing addition and subtraction. When asked how they knew how to multiply decimals, they answered that they had learned at home. Students in Singapore may receive additional lessons after school (tuition)—either through paid tutors or parental help. Practice math (and other subjects) books are readily available for parents to purchase. One of the stores that sell these materials is called “Popular” (http://www.popular.com.sg/jsp/index.jsp).

Time ran out so we did not have the opportunity to see much of the discussion of different solutions or conclusions/wrap-up (the lesson plan only said “Students present their proposal to the class”). Before the lesson ended, some of the children were beginning to compare the lists of items and prices from the different stores. One of the children shared his group’s solution—the list of items would cost in the low 100’s for each of the stores. The teacher asked “why didn’t you make use of the $200?” The child answered that $200 is too much money to spend on a party. One of the adults in the classroom (head of technology) pointed out that a package of rice contained 5kg in one of the stores and 10kg in the other. He asked the students if they had considered the different amounts when making their list.

When we left the classroom, the students stood and bowed to us and said “Thank you, sirs and madams.” We then went to the conference room to discuss the class (over cake and tea) and the teacher and principal joined us.

After the meeting we went to watch Elaine, a teacher with 11 years experience, teach a volume lesson to her 5th grade high ability class. She gave a very quick introduction using a powerpoint presentation and then gave the students connecting plastic blocks and three worksheets, one at a time. The students constructed cuboids shown on the sheet and answered questions about their structures’ volume (in terms of cubes) while the teacher walked around and helped individual students. Most of the students worked individually. Many of them know the formula for the volume of a cuboid: length times breath times height, so they used the formula to find the volume and then filled in the dimensions. A child in the back row filled in all the answers within a couple of minutes and then started building the structures.

There were many other student strategies. For example, one student counted the number of cubes on one face of the cuboid, one at a time, and then multiplied that number by the number of layers. Another student drew a rectangular array representing the cubes on all the layers, placed side-by-side on one level and found the number of squares in the grid by multiplying the number of rows by the number of columns.

The main goal of the lesson was for the children to see the layers of cubes creating the cuboid and how that leads to the volume of a cuboid. The third worksheet asked the children to separate the cuboid into certain numbers of groups that corresponded with the dimensions of the cuboid. Elaine used this worksheet to assess whether the children saw the layers that make up the cuboid. Their level of understanding might have an impact on their choice of cubes. Many children did not use the layers when drawing.

The class came together at the end of the lesson to talk about the answers. The teacher asked various questions: “Did everyone see that there are layers or do you just see a bunch of cubes?” “When you see a cuboid, what do you see?” “What’s the arrangement?” “How many layers can you see?” “Can you decompose?”

We had a catered Chinese lunch with many of the teachers in the school, and we found out much from them. For example, we found out that teachers in Singapore make about $24,000/year (take-home, after mandatory savings). In some schools, teachers get home four days a week by 2:00 as their school does not require teachers to be involved in so many initiatives. At Cedar, however, the teachers have a lot of additional responsibilities, and often don't leave until after 5:00. As part of their responsibility, teachers tutor students twice a week after school.
We then met with the principal, Elaine, and two men from Cedar for over 2 hours to discuss math instruction. Elaine believes that one of the reasons students have performed so well on TIMSS is that they are used to high stakes testing. She shared the desire to encourage and teach creativity to the children and pointed out that there are no Nobel prize winners in Singapore. The principal said that she is very interested in creating a relationship with U.S. teachers.

Tea and snacks were provided during this period. One of the teachers said that Singaporeans like to feed their guests. After eating AGAIN, we took our leave. After a full day, we headed for a tour of Kampong Glam, the Malay area of town. We arrived at the Malay Heritage Center 15 minutes before closing. We persuaded the museum attendant to allow us to stay until 6:15 for a quick visit. The number one pastime in Singapore is shopping, which we immediately embraced as we walked through Kampong Glam, the Malay heritage area. We passed a hookah café and entered Restoran Tepak Sireh. Tepak Sireh is housed in the building that was once the home of the Bendahara (Prime Minister to the Malay ruler). Dinner was a Malay buffet, including laksa, mee rebus (Malay spaghetti), taubu, fermented bean curd. etc. After dinner we boarded the bus and headed back to the Y to rest and prepare for the next full day of activities.

This post created with input from Cassie, Tricia, Celine and Patsy.