Just because we need more conversation about this: 
Lecture on math education by the creator of Jump Math - he makes some interesting points at the very end of the lecture on enriched learning environments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmpVOUrLqq8&feature=g-vrec
Very interesting paper he mentions in the lecture:
serendipitous. thank you so much for sharing that. itâs exactly what iâve been working on lately. i am saving for reference 
iâm so pleased that he was 1) able to duplicate the success of his initial results, 2) duplicate in larger student classes too, 3) teach other teachers to duplicate, 4) increase the mean and decrease the width of the studentsâ results - yes! i appreciated his analogy of the rungs on the ladder and also his comments on the need to find balance between practice and interest. the rat experiment is exactly what iâve been saying (at least locally), and iâm pleased that people are starting to shy away from thinking that intelligence is so genetic! math is a language and requires immersion to gain fluency. my kidâs arenât chinese, but you better believe theyâll learn to speak the language if we moved to china. furthermore, i would too, just at a much slower rate - but i would definitely possess the desire and wonder to make it happen. until we start teaching for fluency, our societyâs problems will continue to grow. math is essential, as itâs the language of the universe. i relished at how he tied in destructive/violent/physical/poor/bad (choose your word) behavior with lack of knowledge/understanding, and how he wove it to our problems as a society - all while emphasizing that it is neither the good teachers nor the bad students who are at fault, but the result of a biased system who is emotionally blinded to the solution. and i loved how he compared the beauty in numbers and math and the wonder of the world and âfiguring it outâ to the visible beauty in nature, and that âfiguring it outâ is so vital if weâre going to see and fix the major contradictions that are affecting our ability to survive as a species. loved it. again, thank you so much for sharing!
also, iâm putting pascals triangle, the bell curve, and some waves up on our play area wall this week for the kiddos to admire as they walk by and play. i will be so excited when they start seeing the patters come out! canât wait! as a matter of fact, in addition to tracking the weather, iâm also going to create an online tally sheet for them to track heads and tails. ⌠iâll probably incorporate it somehow by having it be a way to choose whether we do this or that first ⌠not quite sure yet. but iâll figure it out 
feel free to add suggestions.
(and i just have to say - i love being excited about life - and iâm so over natural high on life buzz killers who think that everything should be just boring and bland and that to stray from that sentiment is not cool, not socially acceptable, and the sum of lifeâs experiences. blah, life truly is amazing and if you disagree then thatâs your bodyâs way of telling you that youâre not living to your fullest and that you need to switch up what youâre doing until you find what gets you naturally excited.)
I just found time to watch this today, and Wow. It was truly inspiring. It even brought me to tears. I am just a little emotional lately about early learning verse the âgiftedâ mentality. Just the other day I had someone (not from this forum) tell me her children were born gifted and that she did nothing to provide them with environment to make them so. This forum of people are quite adamant that all of their children are quite âgiftedâ and that it has nothing to do with their environment. The person also proceeded to tell me there is a difference between an accelerated child and a âgiftedâ child. Basically implying that you could accelerate a child but that didnât make them gifted. Well, I had to do some research, and I found this is common ideology for most people. When I look back on my life, I see it every where. I have been much protected in this bubble I call âBrill kidsâ where everyone believes that all children have the astounding learning capabilities in the right environment.
I still donât even know how I really feel on the term âgiftedâ through genetics as there are some children who demonstrate amazing abilities but its hard to get a honest look into these childrenâs lives. Can a parent really say they did nothing? There are so many factors to raising a child and that is true when it comes to implementing early learning techniques. We have no real idea how each day is played out for any of the amazing children in this forum let alone in the world in general. Is it genetics or is it the way in which a parent presented the information and the level of consistency thatâs performed? The earlier you start (from day one of birth) might mean the difference between reading at 10 months or 15 months. For example, I didnât start with my youngest using LR until he was 6 months. Before that I was using powerpoint slides with no real technique if I was being honest. Is it reasonable for me to expect the same results as someone who used LR from day one (obviously not from day one of birth but then I could be wrong)? Choosing the consistency of 3x a day of LR verses 2x day or 5 days a week vs 6 days a week⌠Did you flash cards along with LR? I scour the posts of the best of the best to figure this out, but honestly I donât know how different their day is compared to mine. Does the education of the parents impact their ability to properly develop the babies cognitive development? Was the economic ability of the parent to provide the toys, tools and resources for cognitive development a key factor? What tools did they use for mathematics and how early did they start? Does the smallest detail of difference mean the biggest difference in results or is genetics the largest factor?
I am sure everyone has a different view on this. I will tell you I donât really know yet. I donât think I will ever know for certain. I will tell you that the problem I have with the term âgiftedâ (implying genetics as cause rather than environment) is that it overshadows the capabilities of all children. It creates an attitude that you are either born smart or you are not or you are born average or born extraordinary. This does boil me as my children did not exhibit âgiftedâ capabilities until I created the environment to spur their cognitive development. I have only been in this for ten months so I will be the first to say my knowledge is limited as well as my experience, but I canât help feeling annoyed by the term âgifted.â Maybe its because its used too casually. I canât really say that there arenât âgiftedâ people out there. I am just saying that it annoys me when a parent will not take credit for the early learning environment that they created. The underemphasis of environment is destroying the chance of most all children from reaching the potential of achieving amazing cognitive development.
I needed to most of all be reminded of the plasticity of the mind. That it doesnât end at birth or at your DNA. I think as parents we often are busy comparing ourselves to more successful parents. We can learn great things from successful and awesome parents, but we canât torture ourselves with thoughts that because we didnât do this or that or had this or that that we some how failed them. At the end of the day, I just want to do right by my kids and no one likes to be limited by their DNA because you canât change that.
I needed a little inspiration after a tough week of contemplating this so thank you for posting this. I am definitely curious to find out more about jump math.
Hey Cokers,
If you think about what he said concerning the bell curve, there will always be kids who are gifted with a high IQ at the top. The thing that is great is that with an enriched environment the distance between the âgifted/high IQâ and the regular Joe is really shortened. So in practice it doesnât matter.
That has been borne out in study after study - so who cares in the long run? And, Iâm still going with my long held belief and several studies and personal experience that bears this out is that the children who are truly gifted - unless they are challenged - end up burnt out and lazy. That is why it is better to tell a child that he is a hard worker and not that he is smart. Children who are gifted end up making their way through the system never having to test their mettle - because people are always so impressed with them and they tell them so. They get to college when the rest of the kids have now caught up and they are stumped. The reality is that unless you are profoundly gifted - the rest of the kids eventually do catch up and you arenât a big deal anymore. They have no idea how to manage time, study, and are just plain mentally lazy. They canât hack it and drop out. Statistically, gifted children are less likely to graduate from college than a âcâ student. That âcâ student has been learning to manage sports, music, work and passing school. These are far better qualities in the long run than merely intelligence alone. Though we need not pit one against the other, we should be striving for a both/and. Those parents who are convinced that their children are just gifted, let them think that , but for the childrenâs sake, I hope they never tell their children that.
In the meantime, keep making your children work hard and donât let them think they are something special. The little boy I have in daycare is now in preschool and his teacher tells him how smart he is that he can read. The little boy is smart, truly smart, but because he didnât have any training is already pretty lazy. I asked him if learning to read was easy - he said no. I asked if he had to work hard to read and wasnât he sometimes frustrated - he said yes. Then I said, âThe next time your teacher tells you that you are smart - you tell her Hog Wash! I worked hard to get here.â He should be proud of that HARD WORK.
As for Jump Math - I am having a wonderful time going through the teachers material and I think we are going to go ahead and get the workbooks for 1st grade. If you are going to use it as a spine, you really need to get the books for school rather than the Jump At Home books. Iâve been through Saxon 1 to Saxon Algebra 1. If you look at the review in these it is not exactly the spiral that Saxon has but it is certainly spiralish - they call it scaffolding and I get why. This will take you through Saxonâs Algebra 1/2 and will be excellent preparation for AoPS material. There is a lot of mental math built in and plenty of stuff to keep the most âgiftedâ busy. It covers material earlier than Saxon. Children are doing three and four digit addition at the end of 1st grade you donât see that in Saxon until second grade.
What this guy is brilliant at doing is moving in small steps and making each step understandable to everyone. Which makes it perfect for EL. I am starting my little girl with Downs on this next week. If the child doesnât get it one way he will come at it from another way. And then another. And you donât move on till the child gets it. I am a big picture person so I donât see things incrementally. I donât know when there are several steps to solving a problem, I just do it. Nor can I explain what I have done. That is a huge disadvantage in math. For other subjects, like literature and history, big picture thinking comes in handy. Iâm reading through Jump and realizing what I did wrong and how I can do it better and that even Miss C. would get math if explained properly and given enough repetition to grasp the concept. The charges leveled against it that it is too much like Saxon and no teacher will be able to get all that repetition in - well, there is a lot, but he manages to cover lots of ground while doing so. And the comparisons to Singapore, itâs probably as good. The lessons arenât scripted like Saxonâs but there is enough of a script that I even I can teach math out of one of these. That is a huge deal BTW.
You make an important point about working hard. I know that my kids work hard to obtain information. It takes repetition, lots of practice and this generally means me playing lots of games.
Right now with my four year old we are working through Mammoth Math 1A, and I find that he can translate manipulative work to worksheets. I end up taking the problems and turning them into a word problem that we work out with using a manipulative like blocks, cars, animals, rocks, etc. For example, he has to fill out a problem with greater than, less than or equal to and the problem will be 4+3 ___ 6. He doesnât get it on paper, but if I show him he has 4 cars in one hand and 3 cars in the other and I have six cars, does he have more than, less than or equal the amount of cars to me? Or how many do you need to make this true equation true: 5+__>7?
I have found myself doing this the entire time, and he prefers this. At age four, I am assuming this is to be expected, but I often wonder if this will translate later down the road when he should be doing book work. Will he have to learn it all over when he is ready to fill out worksheets? Right now I just use Mammoth Math as a spine to organize what math concepts to present and in what order. I just find games or make up my own to teach the concept. We work out the problems using manipulatives. He isnât very receptive and gets bored if I donât bring in a manipulative to solve problems.
You said Jump Math presents concepts in different approaches. Could you give an example? I have been thinking about Right Start Math because it uses a lot of different manipulatives which seems to be where my boy is comfortable with. I am trying the techniques of Jones Geniusâ with my 3 year old and my 4 year old watches and participates as well.
My 3 year old girl is very receptive to this technique right now which is saying a lot as she is a very difficult child because I swear she is training to win a grammy one day. She is acts just to be acting. I canât ever figure her out. We play a lot of imaginative games with her. I can get her to solve any math problem as long as I address her as Milly Patterns from Team Umizoomi and tell that we have to complete these problems so we can save GEO from a shape eating alien.
That is where I am with math. The question is how long does one stay in the manipulative world and how far can it take you? I am just making it up as I go. Its all very hard work though. My kids can appreciate that. There will be know doubt in my kids mind that while learning can be fun. It also takes practice and hardwork.
I wonder if manipulative based math learning builds the cognitive skills needed to do the expected âbook workâ that is necessary later down the road? Or am I missing a piece that connects the two to make independent âbook workâ happen sooner? Right now there is no independence. I have to guide him through every problem. He figures it on his on only after I have worded in a way he understands. Sometimes I donât always word it right the first time for him to get it either. Does Jump Math provide this assistance?
Saxon uses manipulatives until 5/4 I think. MEP all the way through high school. Jump Math - all the way through 8th. Jumps manipulatives are pretty simple - dice, cards, dominoes and printables. MEPâs are like that other than gathering all kinds of fun stuff to count.
In Jump the explainations are very clear and you move so incrementally that the concepts are hard to miss. So, letâs say you are making groups of ten (for mental math). So, first he will explain it using fingers - 2 up and 8 down. How do we know it is ten? We have ten fingers. So we practice making tens with our fingers. Then we do it again on a 10 block - similar to a ten frame. Then we might do it again playing card games. Then again with dominoes. You only need to do the activities until your child has mastered the material. If your child gets it right away and can master facts that make ten he has additional activities that make it just a little bit harder. Use your fingers find ten with more than one addend. Or use the ten block.
If you havenât looked at the teacher resources, they are free if you get an account. I have all the files for grade one in my dropbox here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/60668524/Jump%20MathTeacher.zip
You can also download the first 50 pages of the workbook for each grade free on the website. You could work with it awhile before you decided it is what you want to do. You really donât need the workbooks for the first grade. You can do the work from the teacherâs manuals and blackline masters. Workbooks are $22 a year plus shipping. All other material is free on the site.
EDIT: And yes it is normal to be using them. No, he is not going to have trouble translating it to a book as long as he understands that 4 cars plus 4 cars equals eight cars is the same as 4 + 4= 8. WIth multiple children at different levels this is exhausting. But worth it.
Oh no, Sonya! Just when I thought I had our math curriculum all figured out!!! :wacko:
Can you please elaborate more on how it compares to Singapore Math?
aangeles,
You are in luck - you guys can probably stick with what youâve got.
If you are a parent who is successfully using Singapore then you should probably just stay. Here are the reasons I would switch:
I am not comfortable teaching math or my child is having a hard time with the concepts.
Jump is as good as Singapore Iâm not sure Iâd go so far as to say it is better. What is better about it is how it teaches and breaks down every concept to itâs smallest possible step. Great for a 2 year old. Iâm not sure Ella needs this. And you can teach math so Iâm not sure the true benefits of this program are a good fit for you.
You are going to get the depth that Singapore is great for, you are also going to get lots and lots of review that Saxon is known for. Not spiraling in that kids master the material and move on - just like Singapore, but there is review that goes 2 years back, which is why the worksheets samples donât give you a good idea of what the kids are learning, Do you need all that review for Ella? Probably not. Especially since Singapore is one of many curricula choices youâve made. Do we need it for a 2 year old? Yep. I am not going to buy 10 different curricula for math. We are doing JG and Jump with lots of games and living books.
The worksheets are good, but the teaching manual is the core of this series. If you donât use the teaching material Math Mammon is going to be as effective. You are good. I donât think you need this, but I do.
Very interesting video. I watched it twice. You always finds such informative stuff. I have a kid with learning challenges so it was inspiring.
Thanks again, Lori
Finally found the time to watch this an it is very inspiring. I also need this inspiration as my 3.5 year old is quite a challenge to engage in learning, so to see such a narrow bell curve after using the approach is amazing. I am currently using Rightstart and will be afterschooling once she starts UK reception (at age 4) next year. I love RS but I also would like additional approaches to teaching maths including methods that will bridge the gap between home and school learning.
I really like the look of Jump Math - Sonya thanks again for highlighting the curriculum and also for helping me understand the differences between the different curriculae - itâs so difficult to know what to do for the best and what will be a good fit for my kids.
But I now think that Jump math might be a good fit for us because
iâm not quite ready to get started as we have a few lessons we need to master in RS but there may come a point where she struggles to move ahead with RS or where we need new ways of looking at the subject and Iâm now excited to have Jumpmath as my next step to try. Iâm guessing it will be in a few months. maybe after Christmas. But Iâm excited
Cokers - donât worry about the gifted versus accelerated debate. Whenever I start getting uptight about this issue (usually because my 3-year old is playing up in some way lol ) then I go back to that lovely thread about the books Mindset and some others - did you see them? If not Iâll try to post the link. It seems to me that being gifted is far less of a predictor of how much a person will achieve in life, especially if they fall into the mindset of thinking that itâs all about being clever rather than putting in effort. We all have to stretch ourselves in the end if we want to achieve things and learning to do this is essential so actually learning to work hard and achieve against the odds is wonderful life lesson that can lead to truly amazing and inspiring achievements. Probably the biggest lesson I have learned from Robert Levy on his thread is how much hard work both he and his son put into learning and how he ensured his son understood that his success was due to effort.
I left a comment about this video in another thread:
http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/what-works-clearinghouse/
âI enjoyed the lecture also, especially the part about normal environments producing wide bell curves with large standard deviations and then enriched or restrained environments producing narrow bell curves with small standard deviations. It made sense, but I had never thought of it that wayâ
Cokers, my comment goes along with yours. One thing I do from time to time is visit the WTM forum and browse the accelerated learning threads. The people over there are very quick to point out that their kid was âborn that wayâ. Well, hereâs something to consider⌠if the parent is engaged enough to take part of a forum on LEARNING AT HOME, I find it difficult to believe that they did ânothingâ to foster their childâs gifted-ness. I think I read one comment about the âgiftedâ father learning to read early all by himself âeven thoughâ he was left in front of the television all dayâŚ
LOLâŚ
I laughed out loud because Iâve done enough research to know that this is how many early readers in the 70s and 80s learned to read. Commercials would come on the television and the voice over would say the words that were flashing in large colored print on the screen⌠such as âAct Now!â⌠âSupplies are limitedâ⌠âHead On! Apply directly to the foreheadâ (okay, just kidding about that last one, but the commercial is basically what Iâm describing)
Hereâs another thing to consider. Environmental stimulus can turn a gene on or off. In fact, most of our DNA consist of these âswitchesâ. Iâm not sure which book it was, perhaps Nutureshock (whichever book talks a lot about Ted Williams), discusses this at some length.
EDIT: Was just browsing over at Science Daily and saw this article that effectively discusses what I wrote in this post
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121018123052.htm
Iâve been wanting to post something about this nature vs nurture issue for awhile. In practice, it really doesnât matter whether your child is genetically âgiftedâ or not. What matters is what Beth Lucy Wellman calls brain building - basically nwhat we are all doing here.
I have been attempting to find hard data on Dr. Wellmanâs studies on war orphans in the 30âs but there are only excerpts online and her books sell for upwards of $125 on amazon last time I checked. Her studies involved early stimulation and brain builidng activities with preschoolers in an orphanage. What she found was the early stimulation caused a 15-35 point increase in the Stanford-Binet test scores. The children were followed until they were teenagers and the benefits lasted at least until then. The children far out performed their peers from intact homes.The younger the children were when they received intervention, the higher the jump on the IQ test. It was her research that sparked the nature vs nurture debate and was the impetus for the Head Start Program started by the Johnson administration in the US. However, none of her methods were followed and in its current form head start is just a babysitting service.
I also read study about child prodigies recently. Few of the participants ( a small sample so you canât make too much of this) had high IQâs. Most were in the normal range and a few in the below normal range. Most (something like 90%) of them were on the autistic spectrum or just slightly missing the autistic spectrum. What they all had in common is that they scored in the 94 percentile or above for working memory. It is the autistic fixation tendencies and tremendous working memories that produce children who are so competent in a rule based arena like music or math. While Iâm not after a child prodigy it does go back to the 10,000 hours to expertise argument. Time/Training is what produces a competency not IQ. And IQ functionally goes up with early intervention. Whether that lasts is really unimportant - as the effects early stimulation last until at least the teenage years and by then the normal IQ kids are catching up mentally to the âgiftedâ child anyway. But by the time the normal kids and even the bright ones who havenât had early intervention are teenagers, the Early Learners have had years and years of education under their belt - theyâve made a huge dent in that 10,000 hours. And Iâm not sure the 10,000 hours is directly relatable to early learners as the earlier they learn the better they learn and subsequently the faster they learn. Hence Dr. Wellman seeing a 35 point jump in IQ for the youngest children receiving intervention. That takes a child from 110 - 145. That is a huge leap. Thus, narrowing the standard deviation.
Sonya,
Thank you so much for posting this video. I just did a blog about my biggest regret which was just glossing over maths with my eldest. This video has given me the confidence to go ahead and teach maths and know that even though I didnât start early I can still get my dd well ahead by starting now.
Thanks heaps,
Kimba
Sonya,
I just found Beth Lucy Wellmanâs âA Manual on Nursery School Practiceâ online to read. I didnât know if you had seen it. You got me interested about her and she is not easy to look up on the Internet either.
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015068424897;seq=5;view=1up;num=1
Thanks! :yes: :yes:
happy sigh i am so grateful for you all
cokers - your first post is exactly whatâs been pulling at me too. i think that brainwashing people into believing that âgiftednessâ is primarily genetic is hogwash and that the sooner we take responsibility for our childrenâs success, the sooner weâll be surrounded by upcoming generations who arenât taking us back in evolution. whatâs the point of those who lived before us if weâre not going to pass on their lessons to those who come after us?
if we culturally acknowledge that itâs primarily environment-based (as the limited data supports), then weâll have to acknowledge that weâve been leaving MILLIONS in a disadvantaged situation and that through our own negligence, weâve exacerbated the great intellectual (and resulting economic/social) chasm thatâs growing with each generation in our nation. and then weâll have to acknowledge gasp what the implications are globally. in my perfect world, though, the sooner we figure this out, the sooner we can FIX IT! ⌠and the sooner we can fix it, the sooner we can move forward towards working together towards truly enjoying life and discovering its many mysteries/truths while respecting each personâs niche of expertise. as you may be aware, i could go on and on, but i wonât this time.
sonya - you know i agree 100% with your post re: work ethic and âgiftednessâ. i was one of those drop-outs throw arms up and a lot thanks to you iâm trying to go back and âpay my duesâ ⌠isntâ that how you put it not only that, weâre missing so much research to support that the environment is so very key ⌠again, iâll spare everyone from the rant. i just want to make sure that 1) my kids donât get stuck being âgifted slackersâ, 2) they donât get stuck alienated bc they refuse to throttle to socialize, and 3) they donât get stuck throttling because they refuse to be alienated.
and of course, like was mentioned in this post, i do get myself worked up SO VERY MUCH when i think about what iâm NOT doing with my kiddos bc iâm doing school work ⌠but ⌠some things that help calm me down are the realization that work ethic goes a long way, and that with a bit of desire and confidence, the brainâs ability to fly ahead (plasticity) stays pretty amazing for years. also, when i get frustrated that i donât have time to teach it all, i remind myself that the ability to learn extends to multiple areas. the important thing is to keep making learning fun, and to teach them to appreciate the challenges/work required
itâs funny - to this day i recall in much detail the exact moment when i learned the story about the tortoise and the hare. yes, i could make sense of it then ⌠but now itâs message has so much more impact. i think that will be a big theme in our house here soon
big hugs to all of you - thank you for sharing so much of what youâve learned with us, so that we can help teach our little ones and allow them the opportunity to discover more truths!
what's the point of those who lived before us if we're not going to pass on their lessons to those who come after us?
DING DING DING, ladies and gentlemen, we have a WINNER!
Your sentence sums up manâs biggest advantage. We can pass on things that we learn so that our lifeâs knowledge is cumulative. Itâs why our standard of living is so much greater today than it was just a few thousand (or even hundred) years ago. All the non-sense in education, IMO, typically has to do with negating this advantage in some form or another when it really makes no sense to do so.