Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Soroban/Anzan method to improve math speed

I have been researching Soroban and Anzan mental math and I have to say that I am very impressed by the lightning speed they achieve in coming up with answers to complicated math problems. I found a local Soroban school run by a lady who learnt and taught Soroban in Japan back in the day when it was the norm for all children to learn soroban there. I attended their trial class with my 6 year old and came away even more impressed. Kindergarteners were doing mental math involving 3 digit numbers effortlessly and middle schoolers were mentally calculating square roots of 6 digit numbers. I am also impressed that the Anzan method uses visualization of the state of the abacus to perform math operations thereby using the whole brain for doing math.

Does anyone here use this method to teach their kids mental math? Any experiences to share?

No, but thanks to you, I think I'll be getting DD7 a soroban abacus!

My kids do it here in South Africa! We only started in August this year but my kids are absolutely loving it. More so because they have one-on-one lessons with a teacher who lets them skip stuff once they have mastered the concepts and who finds joy in the way they figure out additional manipulations and patterns.

We love it - and it's a growing craze here too with schools etc.

It's actually a core part of our home schooling right now - we only use Abacus maths (SEMAS is the name of the franchise here) and then Dreambox.com for online maths learning. I have put away all other maths books for the next few years in a bid to encourage fun and strong mental maths abilities.

Wanted to add - they do annual local competitions that feed into national and then international competitions. Next year the International Comp is here in South Africa!

Watching those kids do the mental maths displays is absolutely incredible!

and watching my kids become confident and excited about maths in this way is worth every cent to participate.

Thanks for your replies. I signed up my child on the spot to attend classes with this instructor. What is most impressive is that what I saw in these classes flies in the face of the assumptions that American public and private schools make about how much math a 5-7 year old can handle - which is very little (even the so called "highly accelerated" programs). There was this instructor with about 8 kids who attend K-2nd grade in local schools and the kids were so engaged, happy and cranking out mental math answers (and some written math sheets too) for long periods of time - they were mostly working on 3 digit numbers and 4 digit numbers. Many were in the program for less than 1 year. There were 2 second graders who had been there for a year and they were doing more advanced stuff.
In contrast, my son's highly academic private school that follows saxon sends home 9+1 kind of stuff as homework for second grade math. I saw children in this class who had no fear of big numbers and were equally well versed in addition and subtraction. This instructor was a "Dan" (similar to black belt levels in martial arts) of a high order and she has her own curriculum - she was teaching simple division to the first graders (I use the word simple because the Divisor was still single digit). The kids were happily putting up their hands to get their turn to answer first. And as for the the timed anzan worksheets (one whole page of operations) - for a 2 minute timed sheet, the kids were finishing in 1m 40s - 1m 53s. Watching this class was an eye opener to me.

Madoosa, you are right, I was absolutely astounded when I was shown a video of the local Anzan competition. I have several friends at work who grew up in Japan and they use Anzan to compute complex stuff in a field of work that is highly data driven and a lot of data manipulation is needed. Which is what sent me on my research path on the Soroban and Anzan. I am very convinced now that this skill will help my child for a lifetime.

Nautigal: I was recommended this textbook for teaching Soroban at home by a friend. I am not trying it as my child will attend weekly classes with an instructor. But,I thought that it might help you: http://www.nurtureminds.com/Year-1-textbook.htm

Ashley - it sounds like it is the EXACT same program we use here - the instructors are also Dan's eventually.

The kids books run on the various Kyu's (starting at 10th and counting backwards). We have the same timed worksheets - 40 sums with the abacus in 6 minutes and 40 sums anzan (mental) in 2 minutes.

It was a great way to get my perfectionist over the angst of needing to double check every sum. He now cheerfully carries on with this work and doesn't even freak out anymore if he makes a mistake! I loved it even more for that life lesson which has served him in so many other avenues too.

And wait till you see how excited they get when they see in actual real life where they can apply what they learn! It's brilliant indeed!

It's great for every child - a mathy gifted kid really can stand out with this and learn so much from it too!

Yeah, my child is a perfectionist too and panics in timed tests. So, this is a good way to overcome his fear of being timed while having fun learning a new skill. Not to mention the advantage of whole brain development this skill gives him - using the right side of the brain to visualize the pictures of the abacus and the left side of the brain to come up with the numbers.
Thank you, it is great to listen to a BTDT story!

Ashley if you need help with getting him over the timed panic I am happy to share our method. In fact, Aiden came up with it when preparing for our local competition earlier this year! And it worked so well - in 1 week he went from managing 18 - 20 sums in 6 minutes to 35 - 38 sums in the same time.

Same with the anzan!

Thanks! I looked and it's out of stock on their site and running $198 on Amazon, but maybe they'll get it back in stock.