Presented By: Terry, SumoMath Founder and Sumo Sensei Donovan Mackey
Summary
Notes
Transcript
Has anybody ever used an advocate before? Yeah. I studied them for like a month when I was like seven years old. But my parents took a holiday to Taiwan and I got to give them the daily advocate's lessons. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.
So there you go. Yeah, well, my wife's Japanese. And every year we go back to visit grandma. She always makes sure that the kids go to Abacus school, you know, and it's just there. It's very traditional, you know, it's still paper and pencil, you know, on a physical device. They just do it the old fashioned way because it works. But so. One of the things that we wanted to maybe present was why use this method.
I mean, there's so many ways to really teach math. Why this method? And I think that, well, I introduced the Soroban to both, I have two girls, when they were four years old. And we just worked at home and, you know, I'm a new parent, I didn't really know anything. And I just thought everybody works with their kids at home and gets them ready for kindergarten, you know, so that, and I had no idea what the expected level of math was to start school.
So I just did Sorbonne at home. And so my two girls enter kindergarten multiplying and dividing double digit numbers. And I just thought that was normal. Only to find out that the expectation was that they could count to 30 and not even get the order right, but you know just have some idea of memorizing and counting and so You know it's it's kind of a shocking thing to see that the bar is so low It's not that my kids are special or smart We just trained and they were able to learn far beyond
what they were expected to be when they entered kindergarten. So in kindergarten, the teacher just told me after the first week, she says, "I can't do anything with your child. "I have nothing to teach her." She says, "We're not even gonna touch arithmetic, "let alone double digit numbers, "so there's nothing in the curriculum for her." So we had to put her in, you know, third grade and fourth grade classes just for the math part because there was nothing for her to do.
So I think we can set much higher I don't want to use the word expectations for learning but realizing that kids are capable of so much more than I think what we give them credit for. And why not see what they can actually do? And that's what a program like this is designed for, is to allow the kids that can learn very quickly, just remove all the obstacles out of the way and let them run as fast as they can.
Kids that need a little bit more time, well, that's okay too. They can take more time. But I just wanted to share a short little video that can maybe start a conversation of why try this method.
When students learn arithmetic, they are often introduced to many different ways to solve problems. They learn strategies like counting on, counting back, making ten, decomposing, doubles, using known facts, and many others. Later, they are introduced to formal algorithms, adding from right to left, regrouping, borrowing, Long multiplication and division. All of these approaches are valid. They all lead to the correct answer.
But something interesting happens along the way. The challenge of solving an algorithm often involves a different kind of challenge. Which method should I use? Students must decide how to approach each problem before they even begin solving it. And there is no clear way to know ahead of time which method will be the simplest or most efficient. In a Soroban approach, this experience is different. Instead of many strategies, there is one consistent method.
Students learn to calculate what they accomplish, and efficient and structured way to move from one number to another. This removes the need to choose between multiple approaches. The focus becomes clear, understanding and executing the calculation itself. Another important difference is how calculations are performed. In Soroban, students work from the leftmost digit to the rightmost digit, from the most significant value to the least.
This allows them to immediately understand the magnitude of the answer as they begin. They are not just calculating, they are also developing a sense of what the answer might sense. Over time, this builds a different relationship with numbers. Students begin to see numbers as structured values that can be changed step by step. They develop consistency in how they approach every problem. It is important to say clearly there is no single correct method in mathematics.
Any method that leads to the correct answer is valid. But as educators, we also have to ask a different question. Are students consistently reaching correct answers and do they truly understand what they are doing? When we look at student performance data, we begin to see a larger picture. A significant percentage of students struggle with mathematics at grade level. This suggests that while many methods exist, not all students are developing strong and reliable understanding.
Arithmetic is the foundation of all mathematics. And research consistently shows that early math skills are one of the strongest predictors of long-term academic success, even more than reading. So, the question becomes, how do we create stronger foundations? The Sorbonne Method offers a different approach. It is visual, structured, consistent, and efficient. It helps students understand number representation,
how numbers change, place value, and how calculations are performed. The Soroban is also a tool that grows with students. It can represent very small numbers and extremely large numbers using the same structure. And over time, students no longer need the physical tool. They begin to visualize it. This is what mental math becomes in the Soroban system, not a collection of strategies, but a continuation of the same process, now happening in the mind.
Sometimes it is said that Soroban is not practical or that it is not real math, but this is a misunderstanding. The methods learned through Soroban apply to all arithmetic. With or without the physical tool, students can perform the same calculations by visualizing the process. So, Is Soroban real math? Yes, without question. But perhaps a more important question is can a different approach help more students develop stronger mathematical understanding?
Soroban has been used for generations. It is not new. But for many classrooms, it represents a new way of thinking about how students learn.
Wow, you're a musician.
So I want to just show you a quick little video of these two girls. They're both nine years old. What they're going to do up on this TV screen, they're going to flash 33 digit numbers, one at a time, one each second. So in 30 seconds they will see 30 numbers, each of them will be three digits. And they're going to add those numbers mentally in their head. At the same time that they're adding those numbers, they're going to play a word game.
It's called Chiri Tori, which means One girl is going to say a word in Japanese and the ending syllable of that word her partner has to use to form another word and they bounce these words back and forth. And the reason I really like this demonstration is it shows how you can use both sides of your brain simultaneously. So they're adding and subtracting or they're adding the numbers visually by visualizing the soroban in their head and they're just moving the beads in their head.
They're not thinking about it and that's happening in the right part of their brain while the left part of their brain is having this logical word competition with their friend. So let's just see how it goes. Those are the words they're saying.
That's the answer. So all of our kids are going to be able to do that now, right?
We're going to be able to do that.
The amazing thing is, the answer is yes. And the only thing that would prevent them From being able to do it is really putting the work into developing a skill. So the more time they spend on this, actually physically moving the beads, the stronger the mental image becomes in their mind. So they get that for free. That's the amazing part of it is that mental math... Most people if you say, you know do mental math they don't even know what that means.
Okay. Well, how how do you want me to do that? Well in the Sorbonne world we define it very precisely It's just move make the same bead movements in your head that you do on the physical device. There's no difference so there's no ambiguity about what we mean by mental math and that's what these two girls were doing. They were just visualizing those bead movements in their head. So anybody can achieve it.
You know, of course, the more work you put into it, the more practice you do, you can, of course, take it to a whole other level.
Can you do it now? Pardon? Can you do it now?
I'm not quite as good as this is Master Lee. She is She is a Korean Sorbonne teacher. She's been doing it forever. In fact, she's a world record holder for multiplication. She can do multiplication faster in her head than any other human being. But here's her doing five digit numbers.
There is no 0.4 seconds, so...
And so she'll do... 25 digit numbers, each one will be half a second.
Yes.
I mean you look at that and you go, I couldn't even read the numbers. It seems ridiculous, right? But that's how amazing the human brain is if we just train it properly. And that's the kind of training you know, we're trying to offer your kids. That if they go through the training, I promise you, they will be able to do mental math at some level. Okay, to do it at that level, you need to practice. Just like if you were to play any sport, you know, okay, I can play soccer, but at what level?
Well, the level depends on how much work you put in it, right? So it's, This is not an intelligence test. This is really more really how much you want to commit yourself to actually putting the work to develop a skill. This is a skill. And the best part of it is that we can build on it, right? So, as we saw in the video, they were talking about how 40% of our kids are already below grade level by the end of elementary school.
To me, that's a national crisis. And I don't understand why it's not being treated that way. And what happens is, is our kids just, they move on to middle school and go to high school, and these foundational issues are never resolved. And so by the time they go to college, they have to go into remediation. They have to go back and they have to learn these things, and so college gets more expensive, takes more time, so instead of graduating in four years, I'm graduating in six.
Or I'm not graduating at all because 60% of our kids don't even graduate from college. So my point is that if you can build a much more solid foundation from the very beginning, understanding what numbers are, understanding how numbers can be manipulated, and understanding what counting is and arithmetic, If we can get that basis really solid, then doing algebra and geometry and calculus on top of it will become much more successful.
And so that's the whole goal of the program that we put together. And I like to just kind of play a little game. Does anybody know what that is? No, the big red number in the middle. How do you know?
Do you know?
It depends on the base. There's somebody that actually thought about it. You made an assumption. You made an assumption that that 10 is there. And a lot of people don't even know that that's the assumption that they're making, right? Because what if I did this? What if I changed that base? and it was no longer 10, it was 2 or 16. Your computer calculates in base 2. It's a binary system, only has two digits, a 0 and a 1.
So the thing is, is that those numbers, that same 1, 0, 0 represents very different things depending on what base you're talking about. And most of our kids have no idea that we have a base 10 numbering system. And that number system only has 10 digits, 0 to 9. There are no more. That's all it is. But what we don't understand is how the system works. So our base 10 system, we... reuse these same 10 symbols, 0 through 9, over and over and over again, and each time we use all of them, we account for that with something that we call place value.
But that's never explained to kids. So kids think that counting is something that you memorize, when counting is actually a mathematical operation that is a result of of our base 10 system. And what's really interesting is that once you really understand what counting is, then you can do arithmetic because arithmetic is just a more efficient version of counting. So I give you a simple example that I know you don't know anything about the abacus but I'll just explain very quickly.
These four lower beads all have a value of one. So if I, any bead that touches this middle bar, we're counting. So if I move the bead up, that's one. That's how I represent the number one in the Sardoban world. This is two, three, four. And if I want the number five, I bring down this top bead, it has a value of 5. This is 5 and these are all 1's. So if I want 6, I bring a 5 and a 1. That's 6, 7, 8, 9.
But what I want to point out to you is we have a base 10 system so I've used all of the digits that are available to me. There are no more. So if I want to keep counting What I do is I account for having gone through the cycle of all the digits one time by moving this bead up on the next rod over. So now this one zero really means I've gone through the cycle of zero through nine one time. That's what place value really is.
And when we teach our kids to understand place, If this is really what counting is, then I can introduce them to things like, if I ask you, "How do you add 7 plus 8?" What would you tell me? How would you do it? Do you just memorize the answer? That's what most people do, right? You're taught to memorize your single digit facts, right? 7 plus 8, 15. Well, how do you know? Okay, well, I can go 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15.
Ah, it's 15, right? Probably most people would just count. Well, that's a valid way to get to the answer, right? So I could have 7. I can go 8, 9, right? Now, since I used all of my beads, I go 10, 11, 12, 13. Then I get the 15 after I counted eight more. Right? But, in the sort of our world, we don't do that. In the sort of our world, we use complements. That's how your computer calculates. But nobody teaches you complements in public school.
It's never introduced and it's the most efficient way to add and subtract. If you said to me, "Add 8," I don't think add 8. I think subtract 2. You're like, "What? Why subtract 2?" Well, 2 is the 10-pair complement of 8. And that's because I have a base 10 system. So I would go add 1, subtract 2. That's how I add 8. That's a complement method. It's the fastest, most efficient way to add and subtract.
And there are only five complements because we have 9 and 1, 8 and 2, 7 and 3, 6 and 4, 5 and 5. So your kids will learn to memorize those five complements and use them to add and subtract because it's super efficient. Efficient means simple. Simple means consistent, don't make mistakes. And that's why when they do that mental math, they can get to the right answer because that's what they're doing.
So it's a different approach than what you will see in the traditional way we teach arithmetic to kids. But most importantly, The way we teach arithmetic, we don't teach it fundamentally so you understand everything comes from counting. Everything is a result of counting. Even multiplication and division, which is a higher order operation, but at the end of the day I can get to the answer just by counting.
I can always get to the answer just by counting. But we will learn ways to count faster. And that's what Complement Maths allows us to do. So that's the idea behind the program. Anybody have any questions? I'm going to start quizzing you now. Please don't. It's not going to go well. No, but I promise you, for your kids, This will seem like breathing because they're not going to be tripping like you are on, "Well wait, this has nothing to do with how I learned math." They don't care.
For them, this is going to be, "Oh, you say just add eight? Okay. Terry said just add one and subtract two. Okay. That's the right answer." And of course they will understand what that is and why they're doing it. But you know it will seem like riding a bike for them. And the amazing part is that no matter how large the numbers get, so if I have A really big number, so this number would be 1, 4, 3, 6, 7, 9, 0, right?
And so when we operate on a larger number, we never think about the whole number. We only think about one rod at a time. And unlike in traditional school, we add from right to left. So in traditional school, we start with the least important number, or sorry, least important digit. This digit really doesn't matter. The digit that really matters is this one, the most significant digit, which is on the left.
So sort of untrained kids learn to process from the left to the right, not the other way. So they're working on... the most important digit first so they get an idea of the magnitude of the answer. They know right away if I should have a four digit answer and I got two digits, well something's wrong, right? The other thing is that we only have to think about one digit at a time. So it doesn't matter if the number has 10 digits,
I'm only thinking about one digit at a time. I process that digit, move to the next one. So it never gets more complicated than the operations on one rod. And when you look at traditional math, everybody does great with single digits. As soon as we go into double digit multiplication or three or four digit long division, the wheels come off because the process gets more complicated with each digit that I add to the numbers.
For a Soroban user, it stays the same. It never gets more complicated and to me, That's one of the biggest advantages of learning to calculate this way, learning to understand numbers this way. You don't care how big the numbers are. You're just doing the same thing over and over and over and over again. And you get really fast at it. And that's why Dr. Lee can do what she does. So that's Sorbonne in a nutshell.
Sorry about that. So at home, I think one of the best strategies is to not worry that you don't know this method. It doesn't matter. Allow your kids to teach it to you. You know, be curious about it. Ask them, "Hey, what is that you're doing? Why are you doing it like that? Can you explain it to me?" Because if you ask your kids to teach you, they will actually learn it in a much deeper way than if they were just practitioners.
You know, it's the old saying, "If you really want to learn something, teach it." It really works. As parents, if you just show interest, if you support them and say, "Yes, you know, mathematics is very important for us to learn," because it is, then it's not that you have to be able to do it. You just have to show the interest in it. They'll show you everything you need to understand. And you'll never be able to keep up with them, so just forget about that anyway.
Even if you trained as hard as you wanted to, they would still beat you. And I have hard evidence on that. We've been teaching this for many years, and years ago we used to run after-school programs in—we're from Walnut Creek— And we used to run after-school programs in all of the Walnut Creek elementary schools. And we would combine kindergartners through fifth graders in every one of these classes.
We'd have, you know, like 35, 40 kids in each class. Every single time, within two months, the first graders were outperforming the fifth graders every single time. And the main reason is because the fifth graders go, "I already know how to add seven plus eight. This is too easy for me." And they would make all kinds of excuses or they would go through the problems and not do it the Sorbonne way. They would do it how they were taught in the classroom.
And the first graders wouldn't care. The first grade said, "Yeah, Mr. J." He said, "Do this." They would just follow that and they would always learn faster and surpass the older kids. So it never failed every single time. So, you know, it's I think sometimes it's hard to unlearn if that's the right word to allow yourself to just learn it a different way. And I would encourage all of you, if you have the time, to actually do it yourself.
Yeah, so when this was introduced last year, I had the same question to Sophie, like, okay, well, how can we, I want to know more about it, I guess. So she will, like, give you a login if you want, and you can get in there and do it yourself. And I think I'm on Beatle, like, two or three right now. So it's just finding the time to get in there, you know, but that I'm still asking the kids like okay even though it's like the beginning levels you know and they're they are very excited to show me like yeah oh it's just come on mom it's easy okay yeah right no it's yeah it's cool you know as as a parent um you know with my two girls
I tried to keep up with them and I couldn't. They moved so much faster and as a parent, what could be better? Seeing your kid outperform you is a wonderful thing. I think that's one of the best ways to support them at home. Let them think they're smarter than you. That's okay. It really helps to build their confidence. It's like I told Sophie this story of a third grade girl. We had introduced the program into her classroom and we had been there for two months and
This little girl comes walking up to me and she just has tears running down her face and I'm thinking, oh boy, we really messed something up big time, right? And she walked up to me and I asked her what was wrong and she said, Mr. Terry, she says, these aren't sad tears. These are happy tears. She said, I thought I couldn't do math, but I can do this. And The third grade teacher, she had been teaching for 25 years.
And she turned to me and she says, I have never seen that happen before. And she said, you probably just changed that girl's life. The amazing thing was at the end of the school year when they do the standardized testing, she called me up on the phone and she said, We just turned in our best results ever in the 25 years that she had been teaching third grade. And so it works. You know, it's just, it really just comes down to, you know, putting, it's like any new skill that you want to build.
I won't sugarcoat it in that if you don't put the work in, you won't see the results. If you're not consistent, you won't see the results. It takes commitment. It takes a little bit of grit and consistency. But if you support your child saying you value those things, then they will learn at an incredible rate. And the last thing I'll say is that for parents to support the idea of learning mastery as opposed to trying to move at a certain pace, right?
We say in our program that a typical elementary school kid will go through this program in two to three years. But if your kid takes longer, that's okay. If your kid can do it faster, that's okay too. What really matters is that we just meet them where they are and we give them the time to develop. We allow their brains to figure it out and we do that with Consistency and support and having that support at home is I think one of the biggest success factors for kids.
You know they can come and work at school but if they go home and there's a disconnect there at home their learning rate will drop significantly. I'm not saying they won't learn, they will, but if If there is that continuity to the home, even if it's just five or ten minutes, I mean just that little bit of time, that's what maybe two or three TV commercials? I mean literally. If we can't invest that amount of time with our kids, then what are we telling our kids about education?
I do want to say something myself as a parent, as a new part of the Well family. I was introduced to Sumo recently and mind blown. It's so... exciting for me and I got on learning myself right away and it is difficult but I did learn right away in practicing daily that it's helping my focus and that's a huge thing I mean you might not be as quick as them but it does have a benefit there for you I hear that a lot I hear that a lot
And, you know, if you've been watching the news about, you know, Zuckerberg being sued about kids endlessly scrolling on Instagram that they have no focus, no ability to concentrate, and all of these other mental issues, you sit them down and do something like this, it all goes away. I mean, the... Basics still work. You know, it's, you know, sometimes the old ways, I mean, this thing has been around for over 2,500 years.
And it's never, well, I shouldn't say it never, this version was adapted by the Japanese in the 1930s. But prior to that, It was always the Chinese version, which had five beads on the bottom and two beads on the top. And you'd say, well, why would that be? It goes back to what he understood was in ancient China, do you know what their number system was? It wasn't base 10. It was actually base 16. And so if I had seven beads per rod I could count from zero to 15 on each rod and So that's why it had seven but the Japanese realized well, wait a minute.
Everybody's using base 10 now they took two beads out and That was perfect Well, you know there's there's still An online debate to this day that people argue that, that they say you can do calculations more efficiently in base 16 than base 10. But I deal with the reality of this is what we've adopted. It's good we have 10 figures. Yeah. So long. Exactly. Yeah, that's it. What One thing that I would add is when your children start doing mental math, you might see them using this, which we call a Kami Sotoman or a paper abacus.
And the way they'll use this is they'll use it as a visualization tool where they'll just pretend that they're actually moving the beads, but of course nothing moves, right? But it's a A great intermediary step to, "Okay, I don't need that anymore." It's kind of like go from the physical device to imagining it on a piece of paper to, "I don't need anything." And so you might see your kid come home one day with one of these.
Yeah, if you go online, it's like there are, even here in the San Ramon area, there are a couple of Indian Soroban schools. And they teach a different method using two hands instead of one. And so you'll see them doing this kind of thing when they're adding in their head. It looks kind of ridiculous, but I mean, they get to the right answer.