To better reflect the true creativity and innovation that has been invested in Semple Math for 27 years, a new look has been given to all material covers in the 2nd Edition.

In addition, Jan has reworked and improved Level Three by modifying the multiplication chants, one through twelve, to coordinate more closely with the Times Table’s Kit format. These positive changes will serve to better assist the students in their internalizing of skip counting which is needed for both the retrieval of multiplication facts and for successfully completing division problems in Level Four.

Best of all, the author completely reformatted the Level One Teacher's Manual. Unnecessary language has been removed from the lessons in the interest of efficiency. Educators now have less reading per lesson while yielding the same stellar results. Teacher/student dialogs were added and made more prominent in order to better guide the instructor and student(s) through each lesson. Jan wrote the Level One manual first and had always wanted to revisit the text and bring it up to par with the other three teacher's manuals. Her revisions have exceeded our expectations.

The 1st Edition is going out of print. Sale of 1st Edition materials for Levels Two, Three and Four stopped on December 15th, 2006. The only 1st Edition materials which remain available are the Level One Teacher's Manual (MAT 101), and the three Level One Workbooks A,B, and C (MAT 103 A, MAT 103 B, MAT 103 C). These four titles are expected to be available throughout 2007. A final date for them will be announced on our website when it is determined.

Retaining a supply of the 1st Edition Level One materials allows us to offer more economical variations of our Level One Starter Set for newcomers to the program. This is also the stock from which we draw for our Free Trial Challenge Events!

At the start of the 2006-2007 school year we at Semple Math issued a Challenge. We offered a free Level One Starter Kit (1st Edition) to any educator who would execute the program as written and then return feedback for posting on our website. The Level One Starter Kit contains more than 50 lessons and represents a full quarter of our complete program.

We did this because we believe in our product like no other educational publisher on earth. Although the feedback has been slow in coming, the Challenge has already succeeded. Based on the new orders from “Challenge Customers” and from what can only be word of mouth, the Challenge has proven itself to be an effective approach for opening new markets. There will be a second Challenge event this Fall! Details will be announced on our website in March, 2007.

All of this is welcome news but, we still want more feedback from the classrooms. This week a mailing has been sent to all the participants. They will receive fresh forms and a self addressed, stamped envelope. We understand that a teacher's time is limited and that educators are bound by law to fulfill a great number of requirements each day. We can easily imagine teachers finishing the traditional lessons and then rushing to try a Semple lesson in the last ten minutes of class. For the sake of fellow educators across the country we are asking our participants to make the time to share some meaningful feedback.

All comments are valuable. The positive feedback will encourage educators to try our program. The negative feedback is valuable as well. Perhaps there is a misunderstanding that we need to address or perhaps our text needs a corrective edit. Either way, we will all benefit from reviewing classroom observations.

We remain committed to the belief that publishers should allow educators to field-test materials in the classroom and then report their findings in a public forum. We believe this is something our industry needs to do more often. And we believe educators should support such rare initiatives when they occur. Don't you agree?

Please check back with us in February to review more feedback.

Bill Semple,
Semple Math