Primary Mathematics Users: What makes Intensive Practice "intensive"?

[mom2bee]

I'm hoping to hear from someone who has used or at least owns the various books for a single grade and has been able to compare them to one another. I need help deciding on which books to purchase.

 

Can you tell me how the IP compares to the WB and/or EP in terms of practice problems and scaffolding/teaching/guidance?

 

 

 

About how many problems are in an IP book? I know that I read CWP has few problems because they leave white space in the book for students to perform the calculations and do the work.

 

 

 

 

[EmilyGF]

IP is harder than the normal books. They have exercises that aren't word problems as well as word problems. 

 

If you use IP, you don't need the word problems, too, or the Extra Practice, unless your child needs more review.

Emily

[forty-two]

I'm hoping to hear from someone who has used or at least owns the various books for a single grade and has been able to compare them to one another. I need help deciding on which books to purchase.

 

Can you tell me how the IP compares to the WB and/or EP in terms of practice problems and scaffolding/teaching/guidance?

I've used the tb/wb from 1a-4a and IP from 1a-3b (we run it a semester behind).  There is very little repetition between the IP and the WB.  The WB follows right along with progression in the text, possibly just a shade easier than the text (or so people say).  There's very little explicit teaching in the WB (as that's in the text), but it usually reflects the scaffolding and guidance that's in the text.  For example, we're doing fractions in 4a, and they scaffold the process of adding/subtracting unlike denominators by doing some problems where they make the "change to the same denominator" part an explicit, separate step, before giving problems where students have to do that step in their heads, on their own.  The point of the WB is to give practice on what you just learned in the text, and IMO it does a good job at that - if my dd understood the text, she generally has little trouble doing the WB independently.

 

OTOH, the IP is meant to go beyond the tb/wb, and there is very little straight review - just about everything is a step up from the wb.  The only teaching/guidance is an occasional brief restatement of what the tb said, and the scaffolding can be iffy/insufficient/non-existent.  (They threw a three-step problem in 2b without noticeably prepping for it or warning you it was a step up from what you'd seen before; they also threw in one of those "you don't know the starting value but as you work the problem you realize you don't need it" in 2b out of nowhere that really threw my dd.  We've seen those problems occasionally since, and she's starting to get more comfortable with them.  Somewhere in 3 they threw a "4 ways to get from A to B, 5 ways to get from B to C, so how many ways to get from A to C?" question that was never taught or introduced anywhere.  There's a lot of that in IP ime - all-new problem types coming out of the blue with no nothing to help.  There's several spots in each book where I work through new problems like that with dd together, kind of use that as her intro to them and teach her how to work them.)  You really need to be *solid* on what the text teaches before going to the IP. 

 

About how many problems are in an IP book? I know that I read CWP has few problems because they leave white space in the book for students to perform the calculations and do the work.

 

There is definitely less white space in IP than in CWP.  (My dd regularly complains about the lack of space, in fact, and she can get overwhelmed by the number of problems per page.  IP went a lot better once I started assigning her a few problems on each page of the chapter each day instead of a few pages each day, and when I provided a graph paper notebook for her to do problems on if there wasn't enough space in the text.)

 

There's a chapter in IP for each chapter in the textbook.  Each chapter has 6-8 pages of problems, ten word problems, and 2-4 challenging problems.  Usually I divide the chapter into 3-4 days of work.  We have CWP, but I haven't been getting to it, b/c between the tb/wb and IP, that's a lot of math that dd is doing each day.  Might go through the extra challenging problems in CWP at some point.  But two-step problems have become old hat for dd (I think all the IP word problems are at least two step problems), and even most three-step problems are very straightforward for her.  And there's a *lot* of mental number manipulation throughout IP.  IP stretches dd in ways the tb/wb just don't - it's hard for her, but it's good for her :).  (But she does need the wb practice first - going straight to IP does not work for her at all.)

 

 

[TKDmom]

:iagree:  Forty-two gave a great review.

I haven't used IP for a few years, but ds11 flies through the workbooks with little trouble. Using the text and the WB are kinda redundant for him, so I usually only do a few problems in the TB to make sure he understands it, then move on to the WB. He's finishing up 5A today, and I just ordered IP for 5B. I will use it in place of the workbook (I did this when he was in 2B too) and spend more time with the basic concepts in the TB. I wouldn't necessarily do this for my other kids, but it has worked well for him in the past, because he gets concepts easily and needs work to extend his thinking, rather than just practice. 

 

Singapore math has samples here. Just click on the book you're interested in, click on Contents_Sample tab, and scroll down to see links for the samples.

[KBadd]

In my 2nd grader's words, intensive means "so hard you want to throw the book at the wall." 😂 (This from a child who enjoys math and shows minimal resistance to this book as well as the tb/wb and EP. I would never have guessed he'd say this lol)

 

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Edited December 7, 2016 by KBadd