Math Resources – Page 22

Alii from the Republic of Palau: Singapore Math Training in the South Pacific

July 10, 2012 by Cassy Turner Leave a Comment

I’ve been out of touch for a few weeks, here’s the scoop….

The Republic of Palau is now using Primary Mathematics, U.S. Edition! Earlier this year the Republic’s Ministry of Education (MOE) released a request seeking the services of a Singapore Math Trainer to work with teachers and MOE staff. I submitted a bid and was honored to be awarded the contract.

The last 2 1/2 weeks found me in Koror, Palau, working with the teachers on the Singapore materials and elementary school content knowledge. One week was focused on Grades 4-6, which will begin using Primary Mathematics this fall. A second week was spent with teachers of Grades 1-3. They used the materials last year, so we spent time analyzing successes and addressing challenges they found.

It was enlightening and so much fun working with them for two weeks on content and the Singapore strategies. Sulang!

Melanie and I are playing Salute! – Squared. A third person is squaring our numbers and adding them together. They give us the sum and based on seeing the other card, we need to figure out what card we are each holding to out foreheads.

Currently, I am attending the International Conference on Mathematics Education (ICME-12) learning about current education research and sharing experiences with educators from around the world.

Included as part of the conference is the Mathematical Carnival with activities for students. How often do you see this in the U.S. – Math Face Painting!

Fraction modeling tools from my NCTM session

June 7, 2012 by Cassy Turner 3 Comments

Last month I presented with Lauri Susi of Conceptua Math at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) 2012 conference in on Technology + Singapore Strategies = Number Sense

While planning the session, I noticed that there are many websites and apps available that are basically computation or fact practice. I think of them as “video flash cards”. Then there were websites designed to do what a teacher should be doing, teach. Sites like Khan Academy, Aleks, and other video tutorial sites. What I really needed were websites and apps that could support me, as a teacher, in the classroom.

If I’m teaching addition with regrouping and need a good interactive place value chart, where do I find one that I could use in a classroom, during a lesson?
Where could I find some good fraction representations?

This session is the result of digging for those apps and websites.

Because it was an interactive session, the powerpoint below is not too exciting, but it does have links to most of the online tools and apps that we demonstrated in the session.

Technology + Singapore Math = Number Sense

View more presentations from Cassandra Turner.

We got to spend some time investigating free fraction tools from Conceptua Math.

Filed Under: Math Resources

Thoughts from NCTM session on Singapore Math + Technology

May 3, 2012 by Cassy Turner 1 Comment

Last week I presented with Lauri Susi at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) 2012 Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Here was our session description:

470 – Technology + Singapore Strategies = Number Sense
Lead Speaker: Cassandra Turner
Co-Speaker: Lauri Susi

Visual reasoning is a powerful tool for making sense of mathematics. Learn successful visual strategies and instructional methods from Singapore that allow students to develop a deeper understanding of number concepts using hands-on manipulatives and software. Walk away with strategies for guiding students’ learning that you can use tomorrow.

We displayed the above image of lions on the screen while discussing the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract progression of understanding. A teacher raised her hand and said something along the lines of:

I don’t like that picture. There are male lions and female lions, they aren’t the same. I can’t add them together and students get confused in upper grades when they think that these can be added.

Which is such a great comment. Why? Because this illustrates one of those interesting points that isn’t always in a student textbook and as the teacher you have to be aware of it : labels matter. Yet it isn’t so obvious at a kindergarten level.

2 male lions and 3 female lions make 5 lions altogether.

Well, they’re all lions and we’re looking at a part-whole understanding of addition. Here’s another image from the kindergarten book:

2 boys and 3 girls make 5 children.

2 daisies and 2 tulips make 4 flowers.

So how does this apply to later, more advanced concepts? Consider:

2 ones and 3 ones make 5 ones.
2 tens and 3 tens make 5 tens.
2 tens and 3 ones make 23 ones.
2 dimes and 3 pennies make 5 coins and they also make 23 cents.
2/5 and 3/5 make 5/5
2/5 and 3/4 make…hmmm, we need some common terminology here.

Thanks kindergarten and first grade teachers for laying this foundation!

Filed Under: Math Resources, Tales from the classroom, Training Tagged With: NCTM Conference, number bonds, Singapore Math curriculum

Quick thought from NCTM conference

May 1, 2012 by Cassy Turner Leave a Comment

Tweet from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics conference regarding a discussion of number lines.

Archived twitter conversations from last week’s conference can be found by searching #NCTM12 or #NCTM2012.

Filed Under: Math Events, Math Resources Tagged With: conceptual understanding, number lines

Making math masters: A brief overview of Singapore Math®

March 16, 2012 by Cassy Turner 10 Comments

My students love math class. In fact, many will tell you math is their favorite subject. Why? They’ll tell you it’s because Singapore math is fun. I’d say it’s because once they understand how math works, they become confident in their abilities. So what exactly is Singapore math?

Wait, math from Singapore? Isn’t that some little island in Asia?

Primary Mathematics is based on a program of study introduced by the Ministry of Education in Singapore in 1981, a time when Singapore’s students were middling in math. Fifteen years after the adoption of its new Primary Mathematics Syllabus, Singapore students led the world in global Math achievement tests (Singapore topped international rankings first in 1995, and again in 1999, 2003 and 2007).

The Singapore math success story—from mediocre to world-class in a generation—is no secret. The curriculum provides students with a solid foundation in mathematics by focusing on visual understanding, connections, number sense, mastery, and word problems.

Concepts in Singapore Math® are taught in a concrete – pictorial – abstract sequence

Hands-on manipulatives or real life objects are used to demonstrate the concept, then students use and create pictorial representations. This interim visual step is typically missing from many curricula used in the U.S. It provides a transition from the words to an abstract algorithm. The goal is always to use the concrete and visual components to get to a standard algorithm.

To gain number sense, students are taught to make connections between topics. While first graders will still work on “fact families”, Singapore math also uses a pictorial representation called a “Number Bond” to help students see the connections between addition and subtraction.

Fact Families: Number Bonds:

Understanding numbers and operations is critical to mathematics

Singapore materials focus on place value to provide a deep knowledge of numbers. As students work with and manipulate numbers, they work towards fluency by learning and using mental math strategies.

For example:

“If I know that 7 and 3 make 10, I could solve the problem of 47 + 8 by breaking the number 8 apart into 3 and 5. Adding the 3 to 47 gives me 50, then I can easily add on 5.”

These mental math skills show flexible thinking and provide a “check” students use when the algorithm is learned. I was in a first-grade classroom last week where the teacher was talking about addition and subtraction strategies with her students. They were working with numbers like 9 + 5 and the teacher had asked the students how they got their answers:

“I counted on from 9”
“I took 5 apart to 1 and 4 and made a ten first”
“I used automaticity!”

To get to mastery, students work on focused concepts and skills. U.S. curricula are typically criticized for being “A mile wide and an inch deep”. Topics continually spiral and “It’s ok if kids don’t have their multiplication facts memorized this year, we’ll reteach them again next year.”

And next year and next year…

Not so with schools using Singapore Math®. In first grade, students will learn multiplication of twos and threes within 40. In second grade, they’ll master multiplication and division by 2,3,4,5 and 10. Each year builds on the prior foundation and extends student understanding. By the end of third-grade students will have mastered all of their multiplication tables as well as multiplying and dividing by a single digit. Yep, they will even become proficient with the dreaded “long division algorithm”.

Understanding problem solving

Another component of mastery is the ability to take what you already know and apply it in a new context. Remember being tortured in school with story problems? The heart of the Singapore curriculum is an emphasis on problem-solving — and that means word problems. They are incorporated throughout the materials to provide context to each topic as it’s taught. The key to solving these begins with a bar model or pictorial representation of the word problem. For instance:

1) Ginny has 40 cherry and grape gumballs in all. She has 24 cherry gumballs. How many grape gumballs does she have?

2) Ginny has 24 gumballs. She has 3 times as many gumballs as Paul does. How many gumballs does Paul have?

3) 2/5 of the students in a class are boys and the rest are girls. There are 35 students in the class. How many boys are in the class?

4) The ratio of the number of boys to girls in a class is 2:3. After 6 boys join the class, the ratio becomes 5:6. How many boys were in the class at first?

This is a sixth-grade problem from a unit on changing ratios. Can you see the answer? Note that the number of girls doesn’t change.

1 unit = 6 boys

4 units = 24 boys

Mastering Math Makes Math Fun!

Singapore Math® is a great foundation for elementary math success. Working with teachers in their classrooms, I see the impact the materials have on students every day. Singapore math can help make every child in every classroom a competent and confident mathematics student.

Answers to Word Problems

1) Ginny has 16 grape gumballs

2) Paul has 8 gumballs

3) There are 14 boys in the class

4) There were 24 boys in the class at first

Bar Models generated from ThinkingBlocks.com