Singapore Math

[Guest hypostatic1]

Those of you who use Singapore math do you really need the teacher text or can you do with just the text and workbook? Any good Ideas on how to teach renaming?

Catherine

[Ali in OR]

We have never used a teacher's guide. We're just finishing 2B and have had no trouble just teaching from the text book.

 

For teaching renaming, I liked using our base 10 blocks. I had a poster board and drew three columns on it titled hundreds, tens, ones. I put some "1" blocks in the ones category, then asked dd to add a certain amount. When the amount went over 9, we exchanged ten unit blocks for a "10" rod which we put in the tens column. Did lots of examples and later extended for renaming ten 10's as a "100" block. If you don't have base 10 blocks, you can used toothpicks instead. Bundle some up into 10's and secure with rubber bands. We actually don't use maniupulatives all that much, but I thought this activity was very worthwhile.

[Suzanne in ABQ]

I didn't use any teacher material until 4A, but it has been useful in the upper levels (we're finishing 6A now).

 

I used base-10 blocks a whole lot throughout the program. If you haven't bought any yet, I would highly recommend getting some. Actually, I'd recommend getting the ones from Rainbow Resource that are weighted. Each cm cube weighs exactly 1 gm; the tens weigh 10 gms; the hundreds weigh 100gms. I wish I'd had these when we did our lessons on weight.

 

Anyway, Ali had some good ideas. Another idea for make-your-own base-10 manipulatives is to use beans and popsicle sticks. Single beans are "ones". Glue ten beans onto a stick to make "tens". Glue ten "tens" together together (using more empty sticks across the back for support) to make "hundreds".

[elegantlion]

We started Singapore this year with 3A. I had the HIG and only used it once or twice. We are currently in 3B doing well without an HIG.

 

I do plan to purchase them for 4A and up, just in case.

 

For manipulatives we didn't have the base 10 blocks either. We simply used legos. That worked very well for us.

[Closeacademy]

I plan to get the HIG for level 4--we haven't needed them before that. I also think that Challenging Word Problems is worth buying for level 3 and above.

 

All we use is the text and workbook here and it is plenty. My younger non-mathy child gets instruction from Singapore and practice from Rod and Staff.

 

For renaming:

 

When subtracting, we pretend that the numbers are siblings. The little one wants to give something but doesn't have enought so it asks the next oldest and so it goes.

 

The AL-Abacus from Rightstart is great for addition with regrouping. We used it a lot and used Thomas the Train and told stories about deliveries that he was making to solve the problems.

 

Rod and Staff has a barn idea that is kind of neat to keep track of ones and tens.

 

There is also a rainbow idea at this site--http://ebeth.typepad.com/serendipity/gnomes_and_gnumbers_a_mathematical_tale/index.html Now the lessons are all backwards but there are some great ideas on this site.

 

Good luck!:001_smile:

[Pata]

The HIG has been my security blanket just so I know I'm teaching it the Singapore way since I didn't learn it that way, but I don't think that it's neccessary. As for renaming--I recently read a book Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics by Liping Ma, she discusses the differences in teaching methods between the US and China. There they teach the concept of renaming as decomposing. The rate of decompostion is ten, so 1 ten would decompose to ten ones, one hundred would decompose to ten tens and so on. This has helped us here, hope it helps you!

[Jenmomof3]

We are only on 2A, but so far I've not needed the teacher's text and am not planning on it for 2B. I think personally it might be helpful when we get to more advanced topics in later books, but for now no problems without it.

 

As for the renaming, I've heard that working with money can help -showing that 10 pennies equal a dime, 10 dimes equal a dollar, etc. Sometimes that familiar clicks for kids. We've also used the cube manipulatives that click together (sorry I don't know their name), toothpicks, and anything else around the house we could group and ungroup.

 

Best of luck!

[Karen in CO]

My dd didn't "get" renaming when we used based-10 blocks. However, when we used dimes and pennies, it really clicked with her.

 

I like the mental math exercises in the back of the TM. My dd loves the CWP books.