Shanghai-style maths lessons promoted in UK

Chen Zhuhui, Shanghai maths teacher is giving maths lesson at St Vincent's Catholic Primary School.[Photo by Wang Mingjie]

Chen Zhuhui, also known as "Mr Bean" by all his students, starts his Shanghai-style maths lesson, with a mental arithmetic activity. He invites one student from each group to compete against the others to answers questions at the fastest speed.

This fast-paced activity lights up the whole class immediately, and Chen appears to blend in very well with the students throughout the one-hour session. The way Chen interacts with his students gives the impression that he has been teaching at the school for a long time.

Chen joined St Vincent's Catholic Primary School in central London three weeks ago.

According to Chen, familiarity with his students didn't come easy. He said that the first week was the most difficult since he was new to the school.

"The first week was very difficult for us as we did not know the students' level and were unfamiliar with the teaching plan," said Chen. "I think we made some mistakes."

Li Dong, another Shanghai maths teacher teaching at St Vincent's through an education exchange between the British Department for Education and the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, said that the biggest difficulty they faced was the language barrier. There was difficulty expressing math terms.

"But my partner Katrina (a Math teacher at St Vincent's) helps me a lot," Li said. "We discuss the lesson plans and objectives before the class and also communicate after class."

Chen agreed, with Li about communicating with the local teaching staff.

"Before every lesson I would ask English maths teachers many English words I don't know how to say," said Chen. "For example, the plus sign, I didn't know whether in England it was called a plus sign."

"In class, the English maths teachers would help some of the students who are not good at school or studying. For that, I am very thankful; thanks to them I could teach more easily, " Chen added.

Tess Hackett, a teacher at St Vincent's, said that she thinks the Chinese teaching style has a larger focus on numbers and basic number skills.

"There is also a lot of competition to see who gets to be the first, to be the fastest, which we do sometimes but not to the same extent as them," said Hackett.

The school appears to be supportive in accommodating the two Shanghai math teachers.

Marina Coleman, head-teacher at St Vincent's, said that she thinks having the Chinese teachers is an excellent opportunity for her school.

"Parents and children are very positive about the program," Coleman said. "We've tried to facilitate the lessons to be taught as they would do Shanghai. So the desks are in rows, and the children are sitting in rows, which is different from the way we usually teach our lessons here."

Debbie Morgan, Director for Primary at National Centre for Excellence in the Teaching of Mathematics, is very pleased with the outcome of the exchange program after observing the math lessons across England.

"I feel that it very much is working, our teachers have learned a lot from seeing Shanghai teachers' teaching their English students. And some of the key themes coming out are our children need to know their tables better," Morgan said. "They are better at times tables in Shanghai than they are here and that's perhaps getting in the way - it's slowing our children down with their calculation. "

Morgan also said that the the Shanghai approach is a very thorough one.

"One of the other things that are coming through is that the Shanghai style is a very step-by-step, logical approach, with far more detail," she added.

Lucia Lorenzo contributed to this story.