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14 Jul 2005 - 12:46
Constructivists have claimed that TIMSS video studies of Japanese math classes show them using constructivist pedagogy. This claim has been rebutted by Alan Siegel of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science at NYU in Telling Lessons from the TIMSS Videotape: remarkable teaching practices as recorded from eighth-grade mathematics classes in Japan, Germany and the US (pdf file) The fact that Japanese 12-year olds are given timed math tests tells me that Japanese schools do not subscribe to constructivist doctrine. Japanese-online
Free registration required to view assessment problems.
Q1 How many 'C' balls does it take to balance one 'A' ball? (2 minutes)
Q2 Jenny wanted to purchase 2 dozen pencils and a pen. Those items cost $8.45 and she did not have enough money. So she decided to purchase 8 fewer pencils and paid $6.05. How much was a pen? (2 minutes)
Q3 Hose A takes 45 minutes to fill the bucket with water. Hose B can do the same in 30 minutes. If you use both hoses, how long will it take to fill the bucket? (1 minute)
Q4 A job takes 30 days to complete by 8 people. How long will the job take when it is done by 20 people? 2 minutes
Look at these time limits. A 1-minute limit doesn't give you a lot of time to guess and check.
Testimony of John Hoven On Behalf of The Center for Education Reform At the National Public Forum on the Draft 2004 Mathematics Framework
(pdf file)
Back to main page.
Please consider registering as a regular user.
Look here for syntax help.
Wow, those were very challenging. And two other things about these problems: First, your basic facts have to be at your fingertips or you will never finish. Second, you have to be able to look at your answer and know if it makes sense or not. -- AnneDwyer - 14 Jul 2005
Catherine, This is the link I was looking for. It directly compares NAEP test questions for 8th grade to 4th and 5th grade problems in Singapore math. Unfortunately, it is the PDF format. I can never select small parts from this format. You guys probably know how to do this. Take a look and add to compare and contrast. http://edreform.com/_upload/NAEPmath.pdf -- AnneDwyer - 14 Jul 2005
Well, let me just say that having received my Singapore books I thought that maybe I had bought ones that were too easy. I bought Challenging Word Problems 3, 4, and 5. My 10-year old will be going into 7th grade algebra, so I just figured that most of these would be too simple. Well, we tried some from the beginning of the 5 book and he bombed bigtime. The others he worked on didn't fare much better. He tries to do everything in his head and take shorcuts whenever possible, and apparently he gets away with this quite a bit at school. I decided to take a step back and try the first 3 out of book 4. He missed 2 out of three, but at least he understood how to find the answer. He made calculation problems in a couple of spots for each one. I think we'll just hang out with book 4 for a bit. My husband was stunned since he knows him to be able do most math tasks put to him, at least the ones that come from his teachers. He usually only makes dumb mistakes if he misses anything at all, and then usually only one. The ole' Singapore is turning out to be quite quite revealing. -- SusanS - 14 Jul 2005
test -- KtmGuest - 14 Jul 2005
I tried doing that first problem. It's similar on the surface to the pan-balance problems my son was doing in the spring in Everyday Math. There's no time to monkey around deciding how to do that problem. I didn't see how to do it with the simple methodology they taught the kids in E-math, and I ended up converting it to algebra and doing it that way. The way I did it required the use of fractions. Was anybody able to do it without them? If it has to be done that way -- then the Japanese are using it in the inverse way from Everyday Math. They are presenting you with a concrete problem that you have to 'abstractify' (i.e. turn into algebra) in order to solve. Very interesting! -- CarolynJohnston - 14 Jul 2005
Anne, Help is on the way. There is a way to highlight and select parts of a PDF file. Look for a T with a little square to its right. Click on that. This allows you to highlight. BTW, great math problems. They put the "discovery" crowd to shame. But that crowd has no shame. -- KtmGuest - 14 Jul 2005
OK, Here's my fifth-grade-teacher reasoning on #1: Since 5A=3B, I found the greatest common multiple of 3 and 5 (15). Therefore, each A would be worth 3, and each B worth 5. The rest of the problem just sort of fell into place from then on. I didn't think about doing it with fractions. I don't think that was using fractions, was it? -- CarolynMorgan - 14 Jul 2005
You could work it out with fractions by saying that B=5/3A. Then substitute in the equations B=A+2C. Since this problem involves whole things, I simply multiplied the B=A+2C by 3 on both sides, then substituted 3B=5A. -- AnneDwyer - 14 Jul 2005
Very clever, you guys! -- CarolynJohnston - 14 Jul 2005
WHY do we need an international red cross symbol for gues-and-check? And what is the international red cross symbol for algebra? -- CarolynJohnston - 14 Jul 2005
Anne, thank you! The way to select small bits of pdf text is to use one of the tools on the toolbar that should be at the top of the document. In Adobe Acrobat 7 the 'text select' took seems to look like a capital I for some reason. -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
Oh! We posted that article! You read it here! (SOURCE MEMORY ALERT! SOURCE MEMORY ALERT!) My own SourceMemory is gone. -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
OK, I'm testing to see if I can display a graph I just pulled from Hoven's paper. Error: Unsupported content type: image/tiff. (Must be text/html, text/plain or text/css) -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
No. I can't. Sigh. Carolyn--help! Can we not display attached files on the Comments pages? Does it have to be in the Bloggers section? -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
And what is the international red cross symbol for algebra? Unfortunately, we will never know now, because the web site has vanished. -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
Catherine -- the only problem is that the file name is wrong.. it's SingaporevsNAEP.tiff. (First rule of TV repair... check if the TV is plugged in!) Good thing you grabbed that international Guess and check symbol! -- CarolynJohnston - 15 Jul 2005
Although I don't think the Japanese will be needing it. -- CarolynJohnston - 15 Jul 2005
OK, let me see if that works. -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
I prefer RTFM -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
OK, what's wrong now? Can we not display tiffs??? I seem to remember you saying we could, but I've forgotten-- -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
Why would it tell me I have to have text??? -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
It's just telling you that it can't display tiffs. ARGH! Can you translate the tiff to a gif or a jpg? If not, let me know and I can do it. -- CarolynJohnston - 15 Jul 2005
OK, that's fine--I was thinking that was the problem. How do you translate tiff files? Is it easy? Or do I need to print it out and scan it back into my printer, etc.? -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
If you have a Windows box, there is a free(ware) utility called Irfan View that does almost any type of image conversion you can think of, plus many you haven't considered. link (if I can figure out how to make it work) http://www.irfanview.com/ -- KtmGuest - 10 Nov 2005
Japanese Middle School entrance exam
Anne just asked about a bliki post or an article comparing a Japanese to an American assessment test showing a 3-year gap between there & here. I don't think we've had a post on this exact topic, but I do have the URL for a set of sample problems on the Japanese middle school entrance exam. You can also download or purchase a CD of these problems:The story problems provided in the software "World Math Challenge Volume 1" are translated from Japan's Junior High School math placement test. This test is given to 12 year olds and each section of the full test consists of 225 story problems. Students are given a time limit for each problem ranging from 1 to 5 minutes. If completed within the time provided, the 225 story problems require over 8 hours to complete. The problems are logic-based and consist of about 20 different types of story problems. The point of this site is to begin providing quality math content based on Japanese (maybe a world) standards. The Japanese continue to place among the top 3 countries world-wide in terms of their students' math abilities. The US was recently ranked #14 in international math placement among the industrial nations. We think that US students should be exposed to international level math content and this site may represents the first step.
Constructivists have claimed that TIMSS video studies of Japanese math classes show them using constructivist pedagogy. This claim has been rebutted by Alan Siegel of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science at NYU in Telling Lessons from the TIMSS Videotape: remarkable teaching practices as recorded from eighth-grade mathematics classes in Japan, Germany and the US (pdf file) The fact that Japanese 12-year olds are given timed math tests tells me that Japanese schools do not subscribe to constructivist doctrine. Japanese-online
Free registration required to view assessment problems.
sample problems from Japanese middle school assessment test
Q1 How many 'C' balls does it take to balance one 'A' ball? (2 minutes)
Q2 Jenny wanted to purchase 2 dozen pencils and a pen. Those items cost $8.45 and she did not have enough money. So she decided to purchase 8 fewer pencils and paid $6.05. How much was a pen? (2 minutes)
Q3 Hose A takes 45 minutes to fill the bucket with water. Hose B can do the same in 30 minutes. If you use both hoses, how long will it take to fill the bucket? (1 minute)
Q4 A job takes 30 days to complete by 8 people. How long will the job take when it is done by 20 people? 2 minutes
Look at these time limits. A 1-minute limit doesn't give you a lot of time to guess and check.
International Red Cross Symbol for Guess and Check
NAEP's "hard" 8th grade problems are Singapore's 5th grade problems
....my own school district – Montgomery County, Maryland – is one of the most affluent, highly educated counties in America, yet our gifted students scored at the level of Singapore’s average student. NAEP classifies its problems as “easy,” “medium,” or “hard.” I benchmarked the “hard” 8th grade problems, examining NAEP’s highest level of expectation for 8th grade math. Most of these “hard” 8th grade problems are at the level of Singapore’s grade 5 – or lower. [snip]
8th grade problem, NAEP
Consider: In one problem, for example, the student is shown a “Lunch Menu” with items like Onion Soup for $.80 and Ice Cream for $1.10. The question asks: “What is the total cost of Soup of the Day, Beefburger with Fries, and Cola?” This is considered a “hard” eighth grade problem.
3rd grade problems, Singapore
But Singapore has harder problems than this in grade 3....
1 ) 5 oranges cost $2.25. What is the cost of 12 oranges? ________ 2 ) I want to buy a calculator for $29.70 and a watch for $32.00. I have $28.50. How much more money do I need?
(1) $26.20
(2) $30.80
(3) $33.20
(4) $32.70
Both of these are two-step math problems. They illustrate Singapore’s expectation that all children should acquire mastery of the math skills needed for algebra and beyond. NAEP’s expectation is that children need to be able to order take-out from McDonald’s.
Testimony of John Hoven On Behalf of The Center for Education Reform At the National Public Forum on the Draft 2004 Mathematics Framework
(pdf file)
Back to main page.
Comments
After entering a comment, users can login anonymously as KtmGuest (password: guest) when prompted.Please consider registering as a regular user.
Look here for syntax help.
Wow, those were very challenging. And two other things about these problems: First, your basic facts have to be at your fingertips or you will never finish. Second, you have to be able to look at your answer and know if it makes sense or not. -- AnneDwyer - 14 Jul 2005
Catherine, This is the link I was looking for. It directly compares NAEP test questions for 8th grade to 4th and 5th grade problems in Singapore math. Unfortunately, it is the PDF format. I can never select small parts from this format. You guys probably know how to do this. Take a look and add to compare and contrast. http://edreform.com/_upload/NAEPmath.pdf -- AnneDwyer - 14 Jul 2005
Well, let me just say that having received my Singapore books I thought that maybe I had bought ones that were too easy. I bought Challenging Word Problems 3, 4, and 5. My 10-year old will be going into 7th grade algebra, so I just figured that most of these would be too simple. Well, we tried some from the beginning of the 5 book and he bombed bigtime. The others he worked on didn't fare much better. He tries to do everything in his head and take shorcuts whenever possible, and apparently he gets away with this quite a bit at school. I decided to take a step back and try the first 3 out of book 4. He missed 2 out of three, but at least he understood how to find the answer. He made calculation problems in a couple of spots for each one. I think we'll just hang out with book 4 for a bit. My husband was stunned since he knows him to be able do most math tasks put to him, at least the ones that come from his teachers. He usually only makes dumb mistakes if he misses anything at all, and then usually only one. The ole' Singapore is turning out to be quite quite revealing. -- SusanS - 14 Jul 2005
test -- KtmGuest - 14 Jul 2005
I tried doing that first problem. It's similar on the surface to the pan-balance problems my son was doing in the spring in Everyday Math. There's no time to monkey around deciding how to do that problem. I didn't see how to do it with the simple methodology they taught the kids in E-math, and I ended up converting it to algebra and doing it that way. The way I did it required the use of fractions. Was anybody able to do it without them? If it has to be done that way -- then the Japanese are using it in the inverse way from Everyday Math. They are presenting you with a concrete problem that you have to 'abstractify' (i.e. turn into algebra) in order to solve. Very interesting! -- CarolynJohnston - 14 Jul 2005
Anne, Help is on the way. There is a way to highlight and select parts of a PDF file. Look for a T with a little square to its right. Click on that. This allows you to highlight. BTW, great math problems. They put the "discovery" crowd to shame. But that crowd has no shame. -- KtmGuest - 14 Jul 2005
OK, Here's my fifth-grade-teacher reasoning on #1: Since 5A=3B, I found the greatest common multiple of 3 and 5 (15). Therefore, each A would be worth 3, and each B worth 5. The rest of the problem just sort of fell into place from then on. I didn't think about doing it with fractions. I don't think that was using fractions, was it? -- CarolynMorgan - 14 Jul 2005
You could work it out with fractions by saying that B=5/3A. Then substitute in the equations B=A+2C. Since this problem involves whole things, I simply multiplied the B=A+2C by 3 on both sides, then substituted 3B=5A. -- AnneDwyer - 14 Jul 2005
Very clever, you guys! -- CarolynJohnston - 14 Jul 2005
WHY do we need an international red cross symbol for gues-and-check? And what is the international red cross symbol for algebra? -- CarolynJohnston - 14 Jul 2005
Anne, thank you! The way to select small bits of pdf text is to use one of the tools on the toolbar that should be at the top of the document. In Adobe Acrobat 7 the 'text select' took seems to look like a capital I for some reason. -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
Oh! We posted that article! You read it here! (SOURCE MEMORY ALERT! SOURCE MEMORY ALERT!) My own SourceMemory is gone. -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
OK, I'm testing to see if I can display a graph I just pulled from Hoven's paper. Error: Unsupported content type: image/tiff. (Must be text/html, text/plain or text/css) -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
No. I can't. Sigh. Carolyn--help! Can we not display attached files on the Comments pages? Does it have to be in the Bloggers section? -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
And what is the international red cross symbol for algebra? Unfortunately, we will never know now, because the web site has vanished. -- CatherineJohnson - 14 Jul 2005
Catherine -- the only problem is that the file name is wrong.. it's SingaporevsNAEP.tiff. (First rule of TV repair... check if the TV is plugged in!) Good thing you grabbed that international Guess and check symbol! -- CarolynJohnston - 15 Jul 2005
Although I don't think the Japanese will be needing it. -- CarolynJohnston - 15 Jul 2005
OK, let me see if that works. -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
I prefer RTFM -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
OK, what's wrong now? Can we not display tiffs??? I seem to remember you saying we could, but I've forgotten-- -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
Why would it tell me I have to have text??? -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
It's just telling you that it can't display tiffs. ARGH! Can you translate the tiff to a gif or a jpg? If not, let me know and I can do it. -- CarolynJohnston - 15 Jul 2005
OK, that's fine--I was thinking that was the problem. How do you translate tiff files? Is it easy? Or do I need to print it out and scan it back into my printer, etc.? -- CatherineJohnson - 15 Jul 2005
If you have a Windows box, there is a free(ware) utility called Irfan View that does almost any type of image conversion you can think of, plus many you haven't considered. link (if I can figure out how to make it work) http://www.irfanview.com/ -- KtmGuest - 10 Nov 2005
| WebLogForm | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Japanese Middle School entrance exam |
| TopicType: | WebLog |
| SubjectArea: | CompareAndContrastPosts, MiddleSchoolMath, SingaporeMath |
| LogDate: | 200507140845 |