What Wychwood School says: The Wychwood mathematics curriculum is structured by a carefully selected evidence-based program, created by Dr. John Mighton, fellow at Toronto’s Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. JUMP Math has been researched and found to significantly increase math achievement across the elementary years as compared with competing programs. Core themes include number sense and numeration, measurement, geometry and spatial sense, patterning and algebra, and data management and probability. Wychwood also teaches students how to memorize addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts, and engages students in regular “minute math” timed drills to help students build a strong base of operations facts. Students learn how to monitor their own responses to material, how to initiate questioning in productive ways, and most especially, they learn how to view mistakes for what they are – important stepping stones to mastery. Regular chess practice is also part of the math curriculum at Wychwood School.
Textbooks and supplementary materials: JUMP Math
Calculator policy: Calculators are fine when the central objective of the exercise is not to practice the operations or computation.
Traditional Math typically teaches a method or algorithm FIRST, and THEN teaches the applications for the method. Traditional algorithms are emphasized and practiced regularly: repetition and drills are frequently used to ensure foundational mastery in the underlying mathematical procedures. The traditional approach to math views math education as akin to building a logical edifice: each brick depends on the support of the previously laid ones, which represent mastery over a particular procedure or method. Traditional Math begins by giving students a tool, and then challenges students to practice using that tool an applied way, with progressively challenging problems. In this sense Traditional Math aims to establish procedural understanding before conceptual and applied understanding.
Learn about the different mathematics approaches