THE Singapore Straits Times (ST) in a 27 June story featured onSponge's ThinkingMath lead panel member Ammiel Wan, dean of curriculum at Catholic High School (Primary) about how he got the idea for the teacher's handbook, Challenging Maths Made Easy.
Published in 2006 by the Ministry of Education's (MOE) Teacher's Network, Challenging Maths Made Easy introduced the cognitive conceptual approach to the teaching of primary mathematics. According to the ST story, the Teacher's Network title has reportedly sold 14,000 copies since its publication three years ago.
Following that, in order to help students to benefit from the concepts in the teacher's reference, onSponge collaborated with Ammiel Wan and a panel of consultants in 2008 to organise the material according to the MOE mathematics syllabus.
Thus was born the student print resource called the Conquer Problem Sums book series for primary schools, published in early 2009 as part of the ThinkingMath@onSponge programme that includes electronic resources and interactive learning.
ThinkingMath@onSponge programme
The ThinkingMath@onSponge programme for primary schools bridges the gap between limited classroom learning time and unproductive drilling with assessment books. It addresses the practical needs of teachers and students by incorporating both thinking and procedural learning - core aspects of problem sum solving. This learning with thinking walks pupils through the process: understand the problem context first before looking at alternative representations/relations based on problem statements.
The programme's print component, the Conquer Problem Sums series is designed as an enhanced learning resource for primary school students, and follows the school's syllabus (Primary 3 to Primary 6) to complement the student's textbooks and workbooks on solving word problems. In comparison, Challenging Maths Made Easy is strategy focused targeted at educators themselves.
The interactive learning component includes elaboration of the concepts, cross references, alternative solutions (where available) to word problems, and a forum.
Besides the print series, certain features of the programme's interactive component are already available:
- online forum that registered users (children, parents, educators and other stakeholders) can access and get further assistance with using the books, and how to solve related problems.
- explanation of how the concepts or Key Constructs (see discussion on constant difference in the forum) are applied using worked examples taken from across the series of books. Besides constant difference, users can check out on the application of other Key Constructs to facilitate the solving of word problems.
Workshops
onSponge recently organised workshops to increase appreciation of the use of the ThinkingMath student learning approach. More are being planned.
The workshops are structured to cater to different needs, be it for parents, children or educators.
Those interested in these workshops can choose to be alerted about when these are held via the email address provided at registration or simply email
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Current adoptions in schools
A number of schools are currently using the ThinkingMath print books to supplement the classroom teaching. These include Catholic High School (Primary), Anglo-Chinese School (Junior), Singapore Chinese Girls' School (Primary), Radin Mas Primary, Townsville Primary and St Andrew's Junior School.
For educators and parents interested in knowing more about the student books (as part of the ThinkingMath programme) can contact the publisher onSponge Pte Ltd at
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About Ammiel Wan
M.Ed, B.Bus, PGDE, Ad.Dip (Math)
After the successful completion of his Masters in Education under the MOE scholarship scheme, Mr Ammiel Wan is presently the Dean of Curriculum at Catholic High School (Primary), one of the top-performing schools in Singapore. His passion and belief that every child can excel in Mathematics led him to create an alternative approach to problem solving six years ago. The emphasis in his approach goes beyond procedural knowledge, and is intended to help pupils develop their conceptual knowledge to solve mathematical problems more effectively. Tested and proven on different ability learners ranging from the gifted to the below average, his approach also increased the school PSLE distinction rate from an average of 58% to close to 80% within a short period of three years, making it one of the top three schools in Singapore in terms of PSLE performance. His book for teachers, Challenging Maths Made Easy, published by MOE's Teacher's Network sold more than 12,000 copies in the first two years and is used by many primary schools in Singapore. He has also presented at various educational conferences and trained many teachers in workshops. In 2006, he was awarded the “Fellow of Teacher’s Network” by the Director-General of Education. Today, he is more involved in training the HODs as well as their teachers in various schools, helping them to implement the curriculum changes.
About Panel of Developers
Feedback on recent onSponge workshops
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The Strategies are progressively introduced starting from P3 as appropriate. You can find information about the books here http://www.onsponge.com/learn/thinkingmath.html
and see samples of the books here
http://www.onsponge.com/thinkingmath_books
which is also linked from the information pages.
