Challenging Maths by Ammiel Wan - which grades?

[NickleBee Tutors]

Brenda10:

NickleBee Tutors:

I would say that for topical revision and day to day work, Simon Eio's Step by Step series would be good to help the kids strengthen their basic mathematical knowledge and build up their knowledge application (mainly Section A and B work). Its also a great book to help you highlight and pinpoint which areas of your child's maths is still weak and need to be worked on.

Onsponge (and also Fabian Ng's PSP) are more geared towards helping the children learn Problem solving skills, Model Drawing and other Heuristics skills which are essential for Section C problem sums. I feel that Onsponge has a little more non-routine type of questions as compared to PSP. Both books are packaged in such a way to allow the children to practice each new skill learnt on a few questions of varying difficulty levels. This helps them to understand the methods better as applied to different variations of the question and also help them integrate the methods/skills learnt for long-term usage.

For my students, i prefer to use OnSponge because though both PSP and OnSponge have very well-designed questions, i feel that OnSponge is much more compact and contains just enough questions in each unit to allow the child to practice and integrate one particular skills before moving on. PSP is seriously too thick and meandering and given the large amounts of work, CCA and enrichment classes kids are getting nowadays, its just not practical to expect kids to finish PSP together with the other stacks of assessment books!

Andrew Er Worksheets and Past Year School Exam paper are more for helping the kids to bring together all that they have learnt and applying them in an examination format which has a good mixture of \"Knowledge\" questions, \"Knowledge Application and Comprehension\" questions and lastly the much dreaded \"Higher Order/Heuristics\" Questions.

A* booklets are well recommended and highly regarded for PSLE revision with several top schools using it for their Pri 6 students. In my personal opinion, unless the child is already getting Band 1s or A*s regularly, i would caution against making the child jump straight in without building up his foundations properly. Just a side note, my student who's in the NJC Intergrated Programme told me that her school SCGS (Pri) used the A* Booklets during her PSLE year (2007). However the teachers did not use it for the next batch because even the students there found it too difficult. That's what she told me so could anyone help me confirm if it is true?

Yours

Zhou Shicai

Thank you NickleBee for giving us such a clear picture how to strike a balance toward the preparation of PSLE Maths questions on Section A, B and C.

You're welcome : )

[James Ang]

I recommend the new CASCO Mathematics Tutor 5A by Lee Ann Goh for P5 students to do a thorough and rigorous practice to boost their Maths skills.

[NickleBee Tutors]

Lynn2:

Hi Nicklebee tutors,


Thanks for your reply.

Can I ask, does simon eio book helps in particular to questions from section b?We usually practise it from past year paper.How does it helps as comapred to using past year papers?

Via my experience, past year papers seem not enough to cover all section b kind of questions.

For A STAR math, I heard the questions are good and am not sure cos I yet to see onsponge math.

Regards
Lynn2

Hi Lynn2,

Each topical exercises of Simon's Eio's step by step is divided into 3 different components as listed below, which help target the 3 type of questions commonly found in mathematics upper primary examinations (Knowledge Recall, Comprehension and Knowledge Application, Higher Order/Problem solving skills)

So overall, Step by Step will help the child :

1) Re-cap the fundamental mathematical knowledge, concepts and skills that he has learnt in school. (useful for \"Knowledge Recall\" type of questions which are usually found in Section A & B / Paper 1)

2) Extend the basic knowledge learnt and increase their understanding by applying it on different \"Knowledge Application\" type of questions. (Usually found in Section A & B / Paper 1)

3) Help the child learn and integrate different problem solving strategies in solving more challenging and non-routine problem sums which are usually found in Section C / Paper 2). However i find OnSponge or PSP to be better at drilling for this type of questions than Step by Step.

Yours
Zhou Shicai
NickleBee Tutors

[Brenda10]

James Ang:

I recommend the new CASCO Mathematics Tutor 5A by Lee Ann Goh for P5 students to do a thorough and rigorous practice to boost their Maths skills.

Hi James

Thank you for sharing.

I still remembered that we get to know A*starbooklet after your kind sharing.

We may get in the 6B and focus in some specific section if time permitted.

[Lynn2]

Hi NickleBee Tutors


Thanks for the reply.

Asking u about simon eio for section b, cos dd will miss one or two marks in this section, even has done all the past year papers…Hope simon eio book will able to help in this aspect.

Thus, hoping to strengthen it and to get a full score for section b.Section A has no problem./


Thanks


Can I ask, does simon eio book helps in particular to questions from section b?We usually practise it from past year paper.How does it helps as comapred to using past year papers?

Via my experience, past year papers seem not enough to cover all section b kind of questions.

For A STAR math, I heard the questions are good and am not sure cos I yet to see onsponge math.

Regards
Lynn2

[/quote]

Hi Lynn2,

Each topical exercises of Simon’s Eio’s step by step is divided into 3 different components as listed below, which help target the 3 type of questions commonly found in mathematics upper primary examinations (Knowledge Recall, Comprehension and Knowledge Application, Higher Order/Problem solving skills)

So overall, Step by Step will help the child :

1) Re-cap the fundamental mathematical knowledge, concepts and skills that he has learnt in school. (useful for "Knowledge Recall" type of questions which are usually found in Section A & B)

2) Extend the basic knowledge learnt and increase their understanding by applying it on different "Knowledge Application" type of questions. (Usually found in Section A & B)

3) Help the child learn and integrate different problem solving strategies in solving more challenging and non-routine problem sums which are usually found in Section C). However i find OnSponge or PSP to be better at drilling for this type of questions than Step by Step.

Yours
Zhou Shicai[/quote]

[NickleBee Tutors]

Lynn2:

Hi NickleBee Tutors


Thanks for the reply.

Asking u about simon eio for section b, cos dd will miss one or two marks in this section, even has done all the past year papers...Hope simon eio book will able to help in this aspect.

Thus, hoping to strengthen it and to get a full score for section b.Section A has no problem./

Thanks

Hi Lynn2,

Rather than piling on more work for your son, perhaps you might want to try finding out why did he lose 1 or 2 marks for section B? Some common reasons are :

1) Poor understanding of fundamentals of a couple of concepts (e.g geometry or area). But unlikely if the child loses just 1 or 2 marks.

2) Carelessness. This is pretty common and sometimes it ties in with the whole exam-taking strategy and time management techniques. Some kids will claim that they check their work but when i observe how they check back, i discovered that they were just checking through the calculations. They did not even read the question again and see if they mis-understood the question or applied a wrong method to it. Checking back is a whole skills set by itself and commonly overlooked. It will do the child well to master this particular art.

yours
Zhou Shicai
NickleBee Tutors

[tisha]

A big thanks to NickleBee Tutors for sharing such valuable tips. It really helps parents to coach/supervise their kids better. Also it I find it very motivating.


:rahrah: :rahrah: :thankyou: :rahrah: :rahrah:

[Lynn2]

Hi Nicklebee,


Thanks for the tips.

Will look into the area that dd is weak in.


Rgds
Lynn2

NickleBee Tutors:

Lynn2:

Hi NickleBee Tutors

Thanks for the reply.

Asking u about simon eio for section b, cos dd will miss one or two marks in this section, even has done all the past year papers...Hope simon eio book will able to help in this aspect.

Thus, hoping to strengthen it and to get a full score for section b.Section A has no problem./

Thanks

Hi Lynn2,

Rather than piling on more work for your son, perhaps you might want to try finding out why did he lose 1 or 2 marks for section B? Some common reasons are :

1) Poor understanding of fundamentals of a couple of concepts (e.g geometry or area). But unlikely if the child loses just 1 or 2 marks.

2) Carelessness. This is pretty common and sometimes it ties in with the whole exam-taking strategy and time management techniques. Some kids will claim that they check their work but when i observe how they check back, i discovered that they were just checking through the calculations. They did not even read the question again and see if they mis-understood the question or applied a wrong method to it. Checking back is a whole skills set by itself and commonly overlooked. It will do the child well to master this particular art.

yours
Zhou Shicai

[James Ang]

Brenda10:

James Ang:

I recommend the new CASCO Mathematics Tutor 5A by Lee Ann Goh for P5 students to do a thorough and rigorous practice to boost their Maths skills.

Hi James

Thank you for sharing.

I still remembered that we get to know A*starbooklet after your kind sharing.

We may get in the 6B and focus in some specific section if time permitted.

This Casco 5A book is good and rigorous practice for P5 level students to prepare them well for PSLE later on, eg in the 5A book, page 340, Q. 59 shows a commonly tested question type on ratio topic. I estimate that only less than 1 in 3 PSLE students can solve this type of question even though they have learnt it in school, from books or elsewhere.


Sandra had some red and pink beads in the ratio 3:2. After she bought another 9 red beads and 36 pink beads, the ratio became 6:7. How many beads did Sandra have altogether at first?

[pixiedust]

Thanks James for useful sharing !


The CASCO is really thick though. I think we'll have to skip all the other assessment books if we decide to tackle this one.
The ration question, I am :?