Confident British pupils learn math the Shanghai way

LONDON - Two teachers from Shanghai on Tuesday taught two math lessons in a primary school in northeast London, as part of a teaching exchange program between Shanghai and British teachers.

Lin Lei, a math teacher from the Shanghai Primary School of Xuhui District, gave her first lesson on Tuesday.

"I found the children in British primary schools very confident, irrespective of their math performance. They were very interested in learning and willing to learn," she said.

"However, their learning approach and calculation methods are relatively defective comparing with children in China, such as their response and speed of calculating," Lin said.

She added that teachers from Shanghai and their partners in local schools have been exchanging views and sought solutions to deal with such problems during the exchange program.

Jin Xiangjun, another teacher from Shanghai, praised the British pupils' attitude of active learning. He said he was asked to give more questions when students finished the questions he offered on the whiteboard.

"Once the British students learnt a new calculation method, they were very excited and happy," Jin said.

Both teachers said teaching and calculation methods in Britain were very different from those employed by Chinese teachers in China. They hoped teachers from both countries could enhance communication and British teachers could improve the teaching of "jiujiu times table" (multiplication table from one to nine) in the curriculum of primary schools.

Nick Gibb, Minister of State for School Reform, and about 40 local teachers took part in the open lessons at Harris Primary Academy Chafford Hundred, in Essex, which mainly taught multi-digit multiplication for pupils from Year 3 and Year 4.

Twenty-nine math teachers from Shanghai schools visited Britain in November last year, while a second wave of teachers arrived in Britain in February to join a four-week teacher exchange program in selected primary schools.

"It has been a very successful program, which we hope can continue. And it's wonderful, it's cultural exchange between our two countries," said Gibb.

He said because Shanghai leads the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), and because 15-year-olds in Shanghai are three years ahead of their counterparts in mathematics in Britain, "we want to learn from Shanghai and Shanghai teachers and how they teach young children mathematics. That's the real purpose of the Shanghai exchange."

During the first lesson, Gibb observed the pupils as the teachers asked them to perform some calculations.

"Some children at the beginning of the lesson were struggling with the vertical form calculation for multiplication. After a few minutes of lessons from Lin Lei, they were all performing the calculations very confidently," he commented.

"What we saw during that lesson was children concentrating, learning and being taught extremely well by an accomplished teacher. The teacher taught very simple methods that the children clearly understood which helped them with complicated calculations at the end of the lesson," Gibb added.

He said some British secondary school teachers had been sent to Shanghai, with another group planning to follow in September, to learn about how Shanghai teachers teach math.