Ray's is great if you can get used to thinking about teaching and learning math differently than most of us had it in our own education. Read the Ray's teacher's manuel a few times over. This was also written by Ruth Beechick. She gives the big picture rather than all the details, but I think the reason is we are so used to having each day's work told to us of what we are to do. Ray's, rather, presented the content of the next topic to be learned, each topic and content to its own lesson, and Ray's left it to the teacher to teach the content and drill the content and test the content in the way that fit her own style and personality.

The idea was that each lesson, each topic, the content of each topic, didn't have a time period associated with it. When we think of modern math textbooks, we equate one lesson with one day. But with Ray's, the content of each lesson was to be worked on however long it took for the child to master the content, whether one day or one month, it didn't matter. You stayed there until the child knew that topic and was ready to go on to the next.

The advantages to the Ray's approach are many: there is no such thing as failures in math with Ray's, because a child works on the lesson until he has mastered it. Contrast this to the modern way of doing one lesson each day. If a child doesn't get something in the lesson the first day it is presented to him, he might get half his problems wrong for that lesson. Of course, you go back and work with him on it, but he has the stigma in his mind of, "I got only a 50% on my math today, that's not good." He develops the idea that he isn't good at math.

Also, Ray's can be used with bright children or slower children, it matters not. A bright child might master the the content of the lesson in a day or two. He is then free to go on to the next. He isn't held back. The slower child might master the content in two weeks. He is then free to go on to the next. He isn't made to feel as if he isn't "caught up" to where he is supposed to be, because Ray's is set up as a series of content to be mastered, not as 3rd grade math, 4th grade math, etc. The bright child who "gets it" isn't forced to do two weeks of lessons teaching the same content as in modern math, and so avoids boredom, and the slower child isn't rushed through two weeks of lessons teaching the same content if he really needs to spend four weeks on it, and so he avoids labeling himself in his own mind as no good at math.

Because Ray's is ungraded, the lessons are not keyed to 1st grade, 2nd grade and so on, anyone can begin where they are and not feel as if they are doing "baby" work.

As for games and measurements: I also recommend The Three R's by Ruth Beechick. Another good resource for games and unconventional ways to teach the measurement concepts as well as other arithmetic concepts is Family Math and Family Math for Young Children. Most public libraries have these, and you can check them out and see if it would be something you want to purchase or not. Something nice about Family Math: the games are written so that adults as well as young children, and all the ages in between, can play the same game together, each at their own level. So you can have family game night and play math games instead of scrabble or something once in a while and the whole family can have fun with it.

christinemiller
CCH Administrator
Posts: 200
(2/28/03 10:23 am)