A longtime educator and school administrator, Dr. Hind Louali is the founder and director of Ecole Jean-Jacques Rousseau, known as the French School of Austin. Dr. Hind Louali was responsible for developing a curriculum that includes French immersion, arts and music, and bilingual math instruction.
The French School of Austin’s math classes utilize both French and Singapore methods of instruction. Originally developed for Singapore public schools in the 1980s by the Singapore Ministry of Education, Singapore Math utilizes a curriculum that focuses on problem-solving through diagrams and pictures. Rather than teaching students to memorize facts and formulas, the curriculum encourages mastery of concepts by starting with concrete objects such as buttons or dice, followed by a pictorial phase to represent concrete objects. Finally, students progress to abstract equations, using previous concepts as a foundation.
Singapore math typically focuses on fewer topics in an academic year, but explores them in greater depth. Rather than simply learning equations and plugging in numbers to reach a correct answer, students learn why the equation works. According to the Program for International Student Assessment, 15 year olds in Singapore who have learned math with this method rank the highest at solving problems in unfamiliar contexts.
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