Has Anyone Used Both Singapore Primary Math and Math in Focus?

[CAtoVA]

Have you had experience using both curricula? If yes, what has been your experience? Do you think one is superior to the other, are they the same, etc.? If you switched did you keep with it or go back?

 

I have been using Singapore Primary Math for five years now with two different kiddoes and have really liked it. DS is in private school this year (4th grade) and using Singapore Math in Focus. I find I like that as well and am now wondering if I should switch to Singapore Math in Focus for DD (age 5 1/2). She would start with the 1st grade books as she is now finishing up Singapore Earlybird K.

 

Thanks for any insight!

 

 

[ondreeuh]

If you a ready have the HIGs and textbooks for Singapore, then it might not be worth switching. Personally, I find MIF a lot easier to teach, but since you've been through it before (twice?) it might not matter. Personally, I am such a visual person that I love opening up MIF and seeing in actual photos what to do with the manipulatives. The program just immediately makes sense to me, wheras with PM I have to stop and read the HIG. If my kid wasn't so wiggly, I wouldn't care, but being able to just open the book and start teaching makes my life a lot easier.

 

PM has better pacing, IMO. Each lesson you do some teaching from the HIG, go through the textbook exercises, and refer to the workbook. With MIF you may teach for 2-3 days before you assign any workbook pages, and then it may take 2-3 days to get through the worksheets. I have a K student doing MIF 1, so he doesn't have the stamina to do a ton at once. Other kids may do all the worksheets in one day. So PM has a more predictable rhythm, but that also means lots of flipping between books which gets annoying for many. MIF has more frequent review, though. Every other chapter is a cumulative review/test, and at the start of every chapter is a refresher of the foundational skills for that unit.

 

They each have pros and cons, and since I have both I use MIF as the primary program and pull in extra practice from PM. Then I also use Horizons for spiral review, but that's neither here nor there.

[SkateLeft]

i used Singapore Primary with my older kids, and I'm using Math In Focus with my youngest.

 

At this level, I'm not finding much of a difference in the teaching experience. I agree with the previous poster that the pacing in MiF isn't quite as smooth.

 

My other (very silly) gripe is that the hardcover text for MiF is heavier than the old primary textbooks were, so when we do school out of the house, I'm lugging that around. ;) I picked it mainly because after three times through SM, I was ready for a little bit of a change!

[Nart]

I just switched from SM Standard (son completed 1A and 1B) to MIF 2A. My son and I both prefer MIF. He only tolerated SM but didn't really like it. I love MIF. I think it is much easier to teach, the pictorial representations are better, there is a put on your thinking cap challenge section, and it is more engaging. My son likes to see pictures of other kids, visually likes how the textbook is set up, and seems to understand the concepts much better than in SM. There were sections of SM1 that I really didn't like. I felt like he could just count the pictures instead of taking extra steps to really figure out a problem, so when the pictures were taken away he got frustrated when he had to mentally figure out the problems.  MIF usually uses base 10 blocks for most of the pictures instead of random groupings of 10. In SM if there were a group of ten bananas or beads he would count the bananas/beads/etc.  to make sure there were 10 even when I kept telling him it is a group of 10; he wanted to make sure. He doesn't do that with the base 10 pictures.  Somebody posted a link to preview all of the MIF materials for free including the TG, textbook, workbook, assessments, etc. If you search it should be easy to find. I look at the Teachers' Guide online then teach the lesson. If you get SM then I don't think the TG is necessary at least for 2nd grade. 

[CAtoVA]

Thank you so much for the thorough and thoughtful responses! I do have the (reusable) Singapore Primary TG's and textbooks for grades 1, 2 and 3 and have been through them once with my oldest. I'm just thinking that it may be interesting to switch it up a bit with MIF for kid #2.

 

I seems like my DS's MIF grade 4 is pretty in depth and maybe more challenging than the Singapore Primary series; however, it's hard to really compare since I haven't taught Singapore Primary 4th grade. Seeing the MIF TG's, textbooks, workbooks, etc., would be great—I'll go Googling!

[jer2911mom]

We've used PM 1A-2B and MIF 2A.  I liked the graphics much better in MIF.  The critical thinking pages are nice. They were a bit too challenging for my dd and I had a hard time convincing her they were there to challenge her but weren't the basic material she was expected to learn.  In that sense, I think having the challenging material in the PM CWP books makes more sense (for her).  The end of chapter summaries are very nice.  I agree about the flow issues.  Not having workbook exercises some days and too many other days was very odd.  I did not like that MIF starts the bar modeling in 2A, when kids are still cementing their facts and the concept of regrouping.  I was using the TM and felt like the solutions for the bar modeling chapter were poorly edited.  It was like three different people worked on that chapter and none of them communicated with each other.  The solutions were very inconsistent in their setup/presentation, which my dd and I found frustrating because we had never done bar modeling before.  Sometimes the bar modeling teaching was in the workbook problems and not in the examples.  We just really did not care for how that chapter was set up.  It really frustrated my dd and that frustrated me because it was her first experience with bar modeling, and it was a negative one.  They were combining learning how to draw the models with multi-step problems all at once, and in the first half of second grade.  Just drawing the models themselves was a new skill.  I felt like she wasn't ready for it and the whole thing could have waited until 3rd grade like in PM.  So I think they cover it too soon, and they don't do a good job with it in the TM.

 

One other issue I had with MIF was that the example with manipulatives in the TM is the same as the example in the textbook, and it felt kind of silly to drag out the manips when it was there in pictures in the textbook.  So I found us not using the manips anymore, whereas we had used them quite a bit with PM.  I would have preferred to work through a different example than the one in the textbook.  That's just personal preference.

 

I think MIF is probably easier to use if you have already been through PM and know what you are doing.  If you haven't done Singapore before, it can be a little confusing/frustrating in places, especially if you are trying to use the TM and its solutions.

 

HTH,

Kathy

[sbgrace]

I have used MIF starting with 1B, and we're in 4B now. I have not yet purchased or needed the Teacher's guide, and I had no exposure to Singapore prior.

 

I agree with the PP thoughts, that the pacing of text to workbook practice could be better. But we really like Math in Focus. The layout/look appeals, I like the organization, and the amount of practice has been just about perfect for us. I do work in more review, though it is present.

 

I'm mostly responding because MIF4 was a big jump for us, even though we had been in MIF to that point. I'm expecting it corresponds pretty closely to Singapore Primary, given it's based on Singapore's My Pals Are Here program.

 

The PP mentioned bar models. I purchased Process Skills and Problem Solving FAN math. I really love how it teaches bar models. Because of that, I don't know if we would have struggled with just the presentation in MIF.

[CAtoVA]

That's interesting about the bar model issues. My DS, who currently is using MIF 4th grade level at his private school, is running into problems with bar models. He gave me such push back at home with bar models for the 3rd grade SM Standards/Primary  that he never learned how to use them properly. Now he is suffering and his teacher isn't really teaching the students how to use bar models for problems solving either, hmmmmm. Personally, as a visual learner, I love the bar models!

 

As far as manipulatives go I could see how the many pictures in MIF may discourage actual use of them but I still think I would use them. I usually have my children do a skill/topic using different types of manipulatives anyway because you never know what may "stick" better or have appeal. For example, I use money (from board games) as well as base ten blocks with regrouping (carrying, etc.) and unifix, snap cubes and base ten blocks for place value exercises.

 

One thing that really draws me toward MIF is that there seems to be more word problems like previous posters have mentioned. When I wanted more word problems in the past with Singapore Standards Primary I had to purchase Extra Practice or Challenging Word Problems type of books.

 

Perhaps MIF could work for me with the back up support of the Singapore Primary Standards textbooks and TG's  I already own for grades 1,2 and 3. I could fill in or expand practice where needed and go in an order of topics that makes the best sense. I would be lacking the accompanying workbooks (DS already used them of course) but if I found I really needed one for a grade level I could get it for not very much money.

 

I'm still perusing the very generous virtual samples for MIF.......

[CAtoVA]

Oh, so that's the issue! I totally agree about the strange computing in MIF but didn't know why, when I would help my DS with his homework, he was bringing back one certain way to work a problem (in his workbook). I would show him quite a few ways to do the problems, LOL. Many of the ways I showed him made more sense to him too.