Classical education is built on the foundation of strong reasoning, deep understanding, and mastery of fundamental skills. When it comes to mathematics, RightStart Math aligns beautifully with these principles, offering a structured, hands-on approach that promotes true number sense. How does Classical Education Philosophies and RightStart Math align?
Truth – Intellect (Mind)
Discover truth through logic, inquiry, and Socratic Instruction
RightStart Math Lessons encourage students to contemplate and discover math ideas through guided activities using manipulatives. They also are learning the language of math to help them communicate the beautiful ideas found in math.
How? The teacher asks questions and guides the student to use math manipulatives in a way that enables them to see patterns in the math facts and processes.
Students are guided to discover algorithms, which are not just formulas to be memorized but a process to be understood. Learning to think like a mathematician is a higher order than simply memorizing a formula.
RightStart Math employs critical thinking skills beginning in kindergarten. The teacher asks questions related to a specific situation and the student evaluates the problem, discovering how and why it works. Lessons often include follow-up questions for future exploration and discovery. For example, the lesson will have the teacher ask questions such as, “Will this approach always work?” and “Can you think of any exceptions?”. This provides ample opportunity for students to deepen their understanding of the concepts.
Goodness – Virtue (Will)
Do good through the practice of perseverance, humility, and prudence
RightStart Math Lessons encourage students to face math challenges with perseverance, humility, and prudence daily.
How? Students are instructed to search for patterns not only in geometric shapes but also mathematical facts. They create geometric drawings without detailed step-by-step instructions, relying on a visual of the completed design and using prior knowledge of problem solving. Students use reason and tools to determine their own approach to solving problems with guided support. They also practice recreating designs using the tools and strategies they previously learned.
Math card games provide students with an engaging method of practicing math facts and processes. Students learn humility and perseverance while working on math facts.
Students are taught various methods for solving problems, helping them to see there is more than one way to find a solution.
Beauty – Harmony (Heart)
Recognize and contemplate beauty through an experience with form, unity, and harmony
Throughout the curriculum, RightStart Math develops visualization, imagination, and creativity. It inspires and enables students to understand and love the truth in unified and harmonious patterns that are discoverable through playing with and experiencing numbers and patterns.
How? Students practice extensively with manipulatives and are then encouraged to visualize the process, using their imagination to form a picture in their mind’s eye. Instead of simply memorizing key words, students focus on visualizing and truly understanding the meaning of word problems. Students learn the language of math, which helps them learn the art of communicating truth through beautiful ideas.
Lessons show students how to explore concepts in a way that allows them to see the contemplative beauty of math. Students discover many unique patterns found in the multiples.
They also find the square root spiral in nature after drawing it themselves. While students are learning about fractals, they use their drawing skills to recreate several iterations of the Koch Snowflake. Students often find their geometric drawings in many facets of nature, from cauliflowers to seashells, honeycomb to sunflowers, and melody to harmony. Math can be seen and heard everywhere.
Express and Discover Great Ideas
Able to express and discover great ideas, not only through memorizing, but also through a poetic experience which is rooted in opportunities to figure out the meaning of mathematical concepts.
Throughout the RightStart Math lessons, students analyze and synthesize the processes in their own words and frequently explain how they found their answers.
Learn How to Think
Teach how to think and what to do, not what to think and how to do
Beginning in kindergarten, students actively think about the processes rather than simply memorizing procedures. Algorithms are taught through discovery, and students focus on building understanding. Once a student is able to understand how a process works, memorization is easy to achieve and maintain.
In RightStart’s middle school levels, students learn how to read math text for understanding, use the resources and tools they have developed, and apply their knowledge to new and unfamiliar problems.
Primary and Grammar years
Lay a foundation for advanced study; Learn through experience, observation and sequencing
All elementary math levels in the RightStart curriculum focus on building a solid mathematical foundation in arithmetic, fractions, geometry, money, telling time, and problem solving. This foundation provides students with all the education they need to succeed at higher levels of math.
How? Students develop a deep understanding of mathematics by performing tasks and activities using math manipulatives such as the Cotter Abacus, fraction chart, colored tiles, and geoboards.
Understanding of arithmetic can be enhanced by using the Cotter Abacus and Math Balance. The fraction chart teaches students how to understand and apply fractions using a linear model. Colored tiles and the geoboards teach students about patterns, symmetry, graphing and shapes. All these activities build a solid and concrete understanding of math.
Logic
Learn to think through arguments
Throughout middle school, RightStart Math helps students develop critical thinking skills by allowing and encouraging students to utilize their previously gained knowledge and tools and applying that knowledge to unknown or unfamiliar problems.
Emphasis of Patterns
Patterns are essential to the experience of wonder
Math is the science and poetic expression of patterns. RightStart emphasizes this through the use of place value cards, the exploration of patterns in geometry, various strategies taught for understanding, and the discovery of patterns in arithmetic, all of which highlight the beauty and musicality of math.
Ability to Order Thought
Ability to present a cohesive and persuasive argument
When working through RightStart Math lessons, students frequently explain how they arrived at an answer and what method they used, often writing definitions and verbally expressing processes in their own words.
Coherent Thought
Demonstrates what they know to be more persuasive of the truth
Students are given the opportunity to prove how rules and algorithms function by demonstrating them on a physical manipulative. As students mature, they frequently demonstrate their understanding and articulate their arguments and explanations verbally or in writing.
Classical Education Philosophy:
To know truth, to do good, and to experience beauty
RightStart Math Mission Statement: Helping people understand, apply, and enjoy mathematics.
Classical educators love that RightStart Math fosters both logical thinking and creative problem-solving—two essential skills for lifelong learning. RightStart Math ensures that students don’t just “do” math—they understand it.
If you would like to learn more about RightStart Math and how it may fit into your Classical Education classroom, feel free to contact us.
