by Melissa Bailey | Jul 19, 2012 4:19 pm

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Posted to: Schools, Newhallville, School Reform

Evelyn Hernaiz and Heroilda Posadas learned how to use a “wrap-up” to practice times tables, so they can help their kids enjoy math when they return to the classroom in the fall.

Hernaiz and Posadas (pictured) and 20 other moms picked up a new tool Wednesday in a summer training program at the Lincoln-Bassett School in Newhallville. They’re taking part in a two-week Title I Parent Summer In-Service Training Institute, a federally funded program that has run in New Haven for 22 years.

The parents—all women—sat in a classroom at 11 a.m. for a lesson from Ken Mathews, the school district’s math supervisor. His goal was to teach them a few fun math tricks, as well as how to help their own kids at home as the district shifts towards a popular approach known as Singapore Math.

Mathews warmed up the crowd with a brainstorming session on the number 18. (It was the 18th of July.)

“I got married at 18,” offered Ida Felder, now a grandmother of a teenager entering high school.

Mathews (pictured) then asked the moms to tell him something about 18, using two mathematical operations.

“Oh God, I barely passed math in college,” groaned one mother.

“That’s OK—that’s because you weren’t taught the right way,” Mathews assured her. He urged the moms to get to work and “take a risk” with their answers.

“I want to hear the sound of pencils scratching on paper,” he said.

Dawn Herring, who has students in the 8th and 11th grades, offered a complex reply: 18 - 9 + 3 X 2 / 2 + 6.

The group erupted in applause for the right answer.

See? Mathews said. “When we get math right, there’s a good feeling.”

This is all fine, said mom Kim McKoy. But, she said, her middle-school children at Ross/Woodward School are coming home with a new way of doing things. It involves drawing pictures to multiply numbers. She hadn’t seen that before.

In response, Matthews took her through a three-part exercise. He pulled out a bunch of strings and yellow pieces of plastic with numbers on them.

Moms clearly enjoyed being back in school, even cracking jokes from the back of the room.

Moms strung up their new toys—called “wrap-ups”—and set to work. The tools let you practice your multiplication tables by connecting numbers on the left to numbers on the right.

For example, this stick features multiples of seven. To reach 11 times 7, you wind the red string from 11 to 77.

Talia Morton wound the string through all the answers. Then Mathews told her to flip over the wrap-up and look at the design on the back to see if she got them right.

Indeed she had!

Morton said she has four kids in New Haven Public Schools. Her youngest are 3, 4 and 9.

“I need to get my son one of these. Where do we get these?” she asked.

Mathews said told the moms to keep them as a gift.

They also learned a 2-D way to figure out the same problems. It involves drawing a “garden,” with boxes, to visualize the answer to a multiplication problem.

Mathews said those two ways—one “concrete,” something you can touch with your hands; the other “pictorial,” which you can visualize—are part of a new type of math rolling out in city schools. That’s Singapore Math. It emphasizes deep knowledge and mastery of fewer topics, rather than cursory knowledge of many subjects. It’s based on a mantra of CPA—concrete, pictorial and abstract, Mathews said. “Abstract” is the way most of us would solve a multiplication problem, without any pictures or objects.

Mathews noted that Singapore Math rolled out in grades K to 2 last year. It will be expanding to grade 3 this coming academic year.

It’s part of a nationwide movement toward a universal curriculum called Common Core of State Standards—click here to look inside a Singapore Math lesson at Fair Haven School.

As the city and state shift to Common Core, Mathews told the parents, their kids won’t be taking the Connecticut Mastery Test anymore. Their last CMT will be in 2014. Then they’ll shift to a new test aligned with new national standards.

Besides meeting with Mathews, parents in the program meet with top officials on a range of subjects, including security, bullying, science, literacy, and school reform. This year, 25 parents are taking the training. Each receives a stipend of $200.

The program drew several returnees, including Dawn Herring (pictured), who has kids at MicroSociety Interdistrict Magnet and Co-op High. She said she has attended the training three or four times, to get the “info and resources that parents need.”

Parents went home with protractors, rulers, wrap-ups, and a free deck of cards from Mohegan Sun. Mathews urged them make sure their kids in grades K to 3 are learning in Singapore-style.

“If you see your children are not using concrete or pictorial models, you might want to call the teacher out on it,” he offered. And “if you find that your children are not getting math and not getting that positive emotion” that emanated through the classroom Wednesday, “there’s something wrong and you need to contact your teacher.”

He encouraged them to keep their kids on their toes with math puzzles outside of school.

For example, if your son wants to watch a TV show, ask: “In how many minutes does it start?”

“Math is all around us,” he said. “We just need to give it a big hug and share it with our babies.”