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What was the Singapore book you used to re-teach your daughter mathematics if you don't mind me asking?

• todd8 12y ago
  Searching the internet should bring up several places to buy the Singapore Math books. There is an official site[1]. The books come two per grade level, for example 3A and 3B. They are small books, but filled with content. They only cost about $12 each. There are also workbooks available (for more exercises, but you might not need these) and some teaching guides too (that I'm unfamiliar with). For someone that was in elementary school 50 years ago, the math lessons look very familiar. There was one subject covered for which I wished there was more explanation: translating word problems into equations to be solved. This always came easily to me (I ended up majoring in Math in college), but Singapore Math has an interesting step that seems to work well for kids. They translate the word problems into a standard diagram where rectangles stand in for quantities and then the equations are derived from the diagrams. I wasn't taught that way, and so I wasn't sure how to motivate the correct construction of the rectangles. Don't let this minor complaint disuade you from trying Singapore Math. Consider the latest international rankings of students, the PISA [2]. Singapore is one from the top (Shanghai-China is number one), and as I understand it, all students in Singapore take the test so there is no selection bias. Furthermore, their books are in English while all the other top rated countries (China, Korea, Japan, Switzerland, etc.) have text books that I can't read. [1]http://www.singaporemath.com http://www.singaporemath.com [2]http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-snapshot-Volume-I-ENG.pdf http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-snaps...