OnSponge Maths - Discussion

[visionsg]

Mine is about average i guess 65+ on P5 CA. Found a little fast too but the facilitators helped him follow so he could keep pace. What surprised me is that he used some of what was learnt in his homework so I guess he learned. Am sending again for the P5 in June. I went to the post parent briefing and followed the recommendations about redoing the questions again later. He could do most of the questions but needed help with a few.

[iFirefly]

I received an email from onSponge about the workshop, and i immediately went to the website to take a look at the details, but i was surprised to see that both workshops for P4 (at Goldhill) were already full. The other venue is too far from my place, so i will give the workshop a miss this time round (again).

[buds]

Hi thinkingmath, thank you for taking the time to briefly offer a review of your kids' holiday workshop.. this, in my opinion provides the other side to the coin. :celebrate: I was one of the parents interested in your said workshop for my daughter now in P3, however places were snapped up soo fast I couldn't get an available seat for her at your Goldhill branch for the March one that you organized. I did leave my email address tho. But oh well, no luck. The East branch too far for this mommy of 3 plus one newborn to travel.


Would like to find out if an entry test would be helpful to sift through the competency level amongst the same level of children to ensure efficiency of the workshop?

My daughter is in the 90+ range with no tuition. Was thinking that some holiday workshops like yours can perk her up and further motivate her to attempt challenging math sums/problems. She's pretty much a self-motivated learner and loves to learn new things.

[Puzz.06109.06109.06109zzle]

Hi Buds, your daughter just sound like mine. My DD also in p3, No tuition. Maths was range 95%-full marks since p1-p3. Top students for P2 level (100%). Self motivated. Love maths.


Thinkingmath, I received the email too. Not sure my DD need to attend the workshop. Will she benefit from the workshop? Is it going to conduct using the P3 OnSponge book? Look like only covered topic for 1st smst. But i am looking more towards the 2nd smst topic–Fractions. Or she is more suitable for 1-1 lesson. Please advice.

[buds]

Heyya there, Puzz...zzle! Yup, sure sounds the same our two DDs. DD2 came 1st in class and somehow being in the first class this year she's under some pressure to perform amongst the best in the cohort. She likes the challenge of course and welcomes it. The teachers seem to have put high hopes and placed certain level of expectations for her cos they know she can do it. Unlike yourself tho, I don't see DD2 as attending a workshop as a need pe se but more to de-stress her.. let her attend a vibrant group pgrm.. have some fun.. learning with other coaches and get to know new friends.. open her eyes to other forms of problem solving skills.. in short more of a want. DD2 sees external lessons of any kind a joy and a privilege unlike her jiejie who finds it a chore and a bore. :roll:


I didn't receive any email leh..

[babyjewels]

Hi,


Mrs Lee is conducting a p6 workshop for the holidays( not at her home). She said it’s dealing with paper 2, those 4 and 5 marks questions. Just FYI. Guess you’ve gotta email her if you are keen. Hope that helps.

[HAPPYH]

Any reviews for onsponge tuition??? Please care to share. Thank you in advance

[junrahmat]

Hi babyjewels,


You have PM.

[despmom99]

How big is the group size for OnSponge Math?

[thinkingmath]

@bud & @puzz...zzle


Given your kids marks, I would agree that the generic one day workshop may not be necessary. That said, we do get kids with marks above 90 attending for the following reasons:
- the school they attends does not teach them the heuristics / onSponge methods
- additional practice and re-enforcement with more challenging questions as we can pace for this group of kids using 'bonus' questions designed to challenge the faster kids
- fun and motivation through competitions, etc.

It can be challenging to move the class (14-24 kids) forward when each child learns at a different pace. Typically the things we do are:
- design the curriculum such that the faster paced kids will get additional more challenging questions
- provide facilitators to assist both the slower and faster paced kids. The majority of the kids move along with master coach (at the board) and the facilitators will walk around assisting the kids who require assistance (at any level). They also mark and provide feedback to all the kids.
- have individual and group based competitions allowing all kids to participate and get the sense of accomplishment
- try to split the kids up where practical into different groups based on ability. For example this year we ran 3 P3 classes at one time and split the kids up according to their marks so that we could be more flexible with the pace. This is not always feasible depending on the number of concurrent classes we are running for a given level.

As an example, I chose to take 1 P6 5-day class this June. We had one boy who was clearly ahead of the class; another boy who was highly motivated but when he got stuck on a question he immediately stopped and gave up for the rest of the day; and another we was slower than the rest of the class.
- For the faster boy, marks mid 90s, I spoke with his parents to ensure that their, his and our expectations matched as he was clearly capable of answering all our 'normal' questions, he knew the onSponge methods in school, and was self motivated. Our approach was 1) set expectations, 2) selected a subset of questions from the worksheets for him to do so we could review his approach for that style of question and offer advise, 3) provide bonus questions that challenged him each day; 4) reviewed those questions with each day to ensure that he was able to solve them.
- For the slower boy, he attended the workshop 20-40 minutes earlier each day to review the previous days work ensuring he understood the materials and solutions before moving on to the next lesson. We also provided the solutions to each question so the parents could review his 'homework' and assist before the next day if practical.
- For the child who lacked perseverance, we took a similar approach to above but also found opportunities for him to 'shine' in front of the class giving him greater confidence thus encouraging him to move forward even when he struggled. We also worked on his approach for breakdown questions so that he wouldn't get stuck in the first place.

Of course there will be times where the workshop is really not appropriate and we try to weed this cases out up front before the workshop even begins based on marks and the school the child attends.

@despmom
Are you referring to the holiday workshop programmes or the tuition?

For tuition, the class sizes range from 4 to 10 kids with an average of 6-8 students. Classes will start with a minimum of 4 students however some of our centres will opt to start with 3. For further assistance you can visit this link http://www.onsponge.com/learn/tuition-onsponge.html

For workshops we typically do not go with more than 25 kids in one group with 3-4 trainers providing a coach to student ratio of 1:6 to 1:8. The smallest sized class would be around 14 kids with 2-3 trainers.