As you watch the following three videos about Singapore Math. think about how this methodology addresses the cognitive demands and skills required for solving mathematical problems. How Singapore Math is helping children learn mathematics?

1. YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdxDelUJmaI
2. YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4r8MPNxx7s
3. YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EYJEME8TzU

Some info from the textbook:

Cognitive abilities are those underlying processes that we have been talking about so far in the course - attention, memory, problem-solving, perception,etc. To succeed in academia, a wide variety of abilities are drawn upon.

Academic success, on the other hand, relates to complex disciplines like math, reading, and science. Each of these areas requires the use of many underlying cognitive abilities for success.

What is the relationship between academic success and cognition? It is difficult to succeed in school if, for example, you have attention difficulties or your working memory is impaired. Because having good cognitive ability is foundational for learning in academics, impairments in any area of cognition may lead to challenges in school success.

Do academics and cognition support one another? Yes. Once a child starts learning academic subjects, their own cognitive abilities that they bring to the task can help them to achieve. And once they are learning in a formal context, like in school, the relationship becomes reciprocal, and their cognitive abilities also start to improve.

Themes Across Academic Areas

there are several recurring themes in the development of academic skills to note:

• the role of attention;
• the use of strategies;
• direct versus indirect instruction; and
• causes of individual differences.

Attentionrelates to what to pay attention to. For example, in reading, is it the individual sound, the word, or the whole sentence? And if one thing is attended to, are there enough cognitive resources left to allocate to other things that may also need to be attended to?

Children use a variety of strategiesin academics. Some of them may seem primitive (like counting on fingers) but directly rely upon the cognitive strengths of their age. But how do they know when to use what strategy? Or when to switch? We will attempt to address these questions in the next two modules.

When to use direct versus indirect instruction is a huge question at the heart of pedagogical theory, philosophy, and practice. What is direct instruction? Direct instruction is decontextualized, specific lessons that target specific tasks, like learning to word decode (versus a whole language approach, which utilizes an indirect instructional approach) or learning math procedures. From a cognitive perspective, the use of indirect instruction does not work with all children in all domains (thus the controversy).

What about a child with a learning disability who may not learn well implicitly? Direct instruction and practice are critical for some tasks and content or for some subgroups of learners. For example, you may not have needed to learn about sentence structure in English in order to speak so that people would understand you. However, a child with language impairment does and would need direct instruction in this area.

Individual differencescan be many and can relate to all kinds of differences in learning styles as well as teaching styles. Unfortunately, we do not always manage individual differences in cognition well, as many educators do not understand cognition well. This can result in a cookie-cutter approach to teaching (i.e., all students are taught the same) versus a differentiated instructional approach, where different students are provided with different avenues for learning depending on their needs. In short, the more you understand cognition, the better you can support children's learning.