Maths Assessment Books
-
Review of the GetMeThinking Math Books (Ammiel Wan & Steward Tang; Visible Math, 2013)
by Zhou Shicai (NickleBee Tutors)
January 2013![](\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ai2uCiohNlA/UPOfOn4s4iI/AAAAAAAAAYI/-LpbXHsYNKw/s320/getmethinking+book.JPG\")
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ai2uCiohNlA/UPOfOn4s4iI/AAAAAAAAAYI/-LpbXHsYNKw/s320/getmethinking+book.JPG\">
Hi, This is Zhou Shicai, lead education consultant of NickleBee Tutors and I would like to take this opportunity to share with parents here of a new book published by Mr Ammiel Wan (former Vice-Principle of Rosyth Primary, Author of the popular OnSponge, Challenging Problems Made Easy & Visible Thinking in Math assessment books and who is currently the Principal Consultant at Visble Math).
I have been teaching PSLE & Olympiad Math to GEP and High Ability students for a number of years now. Given my education background and multiple awards in Olympiad level Math Competitions during my Raffles Institution (GEP) days, it is probably no surprise that when I first started out as a Math Educator while still studying as a dental undergraduate in NUS Faculty of Dentistry, i was not impressed with the standards of Math education and teaching methodology amongst teachers and tutors when it came to imparting math problem solving skillsets and concepts across to primary school students.
Hence when Mr Ammiel Wan first published \"Challenging Problem Made Easy\" back in 2006, i found that he brought a fresh approach to guiding students through math problem solving by introducing the idea that Math Problem Solving could be approached from a \"Conceptual\" perspective. He followed up in 2008 by being a consultant in the development of the \"Onsponge\" Math Books which further expanded his conceptual approach and included the tripartite of \"Contextual, Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge\".
After first perusing his Onsponge books back in 2008, I became a firm believer in Mr Ammiel Wan's \"Cognitive Conceptual Approach in Learning Mathematics\" as I shared his belief that most teachers focus so much on \"Procedural\" knowledge that they have lost sight of the original purpose of Problem Solving in Mathematics, which was to promote critical thinking and application of heuristics and problem solving skills. I was rather excited that Mr Ammiel Wan's approach in Mathematical education dovetailed in very well with my own teaching methodology and I began incorporating and adapting elements of his approach into my teaching curriculum.
Of course, there are certain points I have to make before carrying on. I have found it quite strange that school teachers and tutors are still encouraging students to buy Ammiel Wan's \"Challenging Math Problems Made Easy\". Though it was ground-breaking when first published in 2006, it can be considered his first-generational work and much of its content has been superseded by his succeeding works over the past 7 years or so.
Also, though I find the OnSponge Math Books (also involving Mr Ammiel Wan as a consultant) to be one of the better math assessment books in the market with an excellent question bank and some reasonably good worked examples. I found that it's chief failing was that it unwittingly encouraged students (who are not properly guided in the cognitive conceptual approach by their teachers) to memorise a certain concept to use for associated questions and instead of encouraging the students to apply concepts after understanding the context of the question. It instead led to students skimming through the question and deciding, without much understanding and thinking involved, to apply a certain concept just because they have done a similar question previously and if the concept worked for that, it follows that it should work for this!
Now, onto the review proper. The GetMeThinking Math Book by Ammiel Wan & Steward Tang (Visible Math) is the cumulation of years of experience and feedback as can be seen from the updated methodology of Parallel Thinking and Read3Write together with the original \"Cognitive Conceptual Approach\". I have looked through the Pri 5A version and have concluded that it has addressed the main shortcomings of Ammiel Wan's previous books and also, strengthened the approach it takes in reinforcing concepts and knowledge to the students in a non-didactic manner and provides guidance to the student's thought process in an engaging and interesting way. I believe that this will help the students internalize the contextual and conceptual knowledge required in a meaningful manner and help them improve their problem solving skills. Also, I have to add that the procedures and methods in the examples have been greatly updated and are much improved compared to those in \"OnSponge\" or \"Challenging Maths Problems Made Easy\". I have thus finally found a book with worked examples which are able to match my own problem solving methods taught to my students, in both elegance and ease of usage. I would recommend that parents and educators use the \"Visible Thinking in Maths Series by Ammiel Wan\" to improve on their child's basic mathematical concepts (as tested in Math Paper 1) after which they should then follow up on \"GetMeThinking by Ammiel Wan\" to further enhance their child's intermediate and advanced problem solving skills (as usually tested in Math Paper 2).
Kudos to the Visble Math Team for producing an excellent Math Book and I will most definitely be incorporating the 'GetMeThinking Math Book\" into my teaching curriculum at NickleBee Tutors.
Just a point, I am in no way associated with Mr Ammiel Wan, Mr Steward Tang or Visible Maths and this review of their work is written on my own accord and for the benefit of the general populace. However I am rather unabashedly a big fan of the good work Mr Ammiel Wan and Mr Steward Tang have done in advancing mathematical education in Singapore and hope to learn more from them over the years so that I may help my own students improve and develop a love for all things mathematics!
Yours,
Zhou Shicai
Lead Education Consultant
NickleBee Tutors
http://www.nicklebeetutors.com -
An Review of \"Visible Thinking in Mathematics\" written by Mr Ammiel Wan (Marshall Cavendish, 2011)
by Zhou Shicai (NickleBee Tutors)
February 2011![](\"http://edu.marshallcavendish.com/Storage/CoverImageFile/9789810115289.jpg\")
Just to give a rough overview of this new series of assessment/guide books for the benefit for all parents/educators who have queries regarding this new set of books by Mr Ammiel Wan who's now a vice-principle in Rosyth Primary School. Bought the Pri 4A, 5A and Pri 6 version from Popular yesterday. I will focus on the Primary 6 version in this review.
A note before i start, I wish to state that i am in no way affiliated with OnSponge, Visible Maths, Marshall Cavendish or Mr Ammiel Wan. I am just a Maths Educator who wish to share my views on this resource with everyone here.
This book can be considered his 3rd Generation work in \"Cognitive Conceptual Approach in Learning Mathematics\" which Mr Ammiel Wan has been spearheading and refining since 2006 when he first published the popular \"Challenging Problems Made Easy\". He followed up on his early success by teaming up with \"Thinking Maths @ OnSponge\" (which is a education company set up by 2 entrepreneurs) to publish a series of Problem Solving Books (Pri 3 to Pri 6) which uses his set of Heuristics and Concepts to guide student's understanding of the various problem sums and learn how to apply those concepts to conquer problem sums.
As I pointed out before, both \"Challenging Problems Made Easy\" and \"Onsponge\" are focused only on building up the student's thinking skills and procedural learning to tackle Section C / Paper 2 type of problem sums. However, as many educators can attest, a large number of students lack proper understanding of the reasoning behind basic concepts and skills and they would end up memorizing facts and procedures like \"Before you plus 2 fractions together, you must make the denominator the same\" without really understanding why is it so. For very basic questions such as those \"Knowledge Recall\" questions found in section A, this is all well and dandy.
The problem starts when you start loading Problem solving Concepts / Heuristics such as those found in \"On Sponge\" onto such a foundation, the child would be at a loss. This is because he is now surrounded by concepts and thinking skills alien to him but which are essential for problem solving. What they typically do and which i had observed in some of my students when they were using OnSponge under their previous tutors (before they engaged me) is that they would memorize the concept for each particular chapter and keep regurgitating it for each similar question in the same chapter. However they did it without proper understanding of the concepts and when asked by their parents or previous tutors to apply the same concept for a similar question in an exam paper after a couple of weeks, they would look blank and keep insisting that they don't know how to do it.
There are 2 ways to combat this.
The first way is for the Parent or Educator to sit beside the child while he is using \"OnSponge\" or doing other problem solving assessment books and guide him on how to read and understand the context of the problem, think through the proper usage and application of the methods as taught and understand the reasoning on how the various concepts and methods can help you use the facts and information in the question to solve it.
The 2nd way is to start from basics and start getting the child used to a thinking and reasoning based approach rather than a rote -learning approach of learning basic mathematical concepts. This would help the parent or educator to cultivate the child's thinking skills and help direct the student's thought process on key concepts. And in so doing, the student would be better able to integrate the Problem solving concepts and Heuristics as they come along later.
\"Visible Thinking in Mathematics\" is basically the 2nd approach and personally i think its way overdue but nonetheless a welcome addition to my resource of teaching materials.
Below are a number of thoughts about the book :
1) I like the way the chapters are divided into easy to digest sub-chapters which are designed to allow the student to integrate each new concept in a progressive manner and encourage the child's knowledge to spiral upwards and build on top of each other until mastery of the chapter is attained.
2) Also, each sub-chapter is further sub-divided into \"Thinking Platforms\" and \"Mastery Platforms. \"Thinking Platforms\" provides guidance for the student to develop his understanding of the concept by thinking about how the concept can apply to various problems with the same context but different key words or different numerical values. This allows the student to learn by thinking and reasoning about the context of the question rather than simply memorizing methods and concepts. \"Mastery Platforms\" allow the student to practice his newly learnt concepts and skills on various \"Parallel\" questions which has the same context as the examples but which are all slightly different so as to allow the student to understand and integrate the concepts and skills learnt better.
3) The \"Notes\" placed at the end of most thinking platforms provide a valuable tip/resource to the parent or educator on clarifying common misconceptions, areas of difficulties commonly faced by the student, or information on how to make the concept easier to understand by the student.
Overall, i think \"Visible Thinking in Mathematics\" is a good \"Broad-Based\" resource (as compared to \"OnSponge\" which only focuses on Problem Sums) to complement the school's textbook in helping the students master basic and advanced mathematical concepts through both conceptual understanding and critical thinking.
I personally think this would be a good resource for those looking for a assessment book to help them build up their fundamentals while improving their thinking skills and understanding of mathematical concepts. It gels in very well with my own teaching methodology and after a couple of weeks of analyzing the new books and planning on how it will fit into my teaching curriculum, i will provide an update on my review.
Yours
Zhou Shicai
Lead Education Consultant
Nicklebee Tutors
http://www.nicklebeetutors.com
Note : This review of \"Visible Thinking in Maths\" was first written in Feb 2011 and has been reproduced above for the benefit of parents who wish to select the best educational materials for their children. -
Review of the \"thinkingMath @ Onsponge\" Series (Ammiel Wan, Chris Rogers & Corine Quek; 2008)
By Zhou Shicai (NickleBee Tutors) first written Jan 2011![](\"http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T1Ag7jyoqi0/UJxjP3cUphI/AAAAAAAAARI/A4yCiSl40xc/s1600/onsponge+books.jpg\")
Mr Ammiel Wan first developed the cognitive conceptual approach and published it in a book \"Challenging Math Problems Made Easy\" way back in 2006. If I am not wrong, he was the HOD of curriculum in Catholic High back then.
Anyway, from what i understand, Onsponge then partnered with Mr Ammiel Wan in 2008 to use and develop his mathematics teaching concepts into the Onsponge series of assessment books as sold today.
The Onsponge books are an awesome resource (if a bit dated) for students wanting to learn the various conceptual knowledge required to ace Problem Sums in the Math Paper 2. Personally, while I admire the way Mr Ammiel Wan has revolutionized the approach to teaching students mathematics as it gels in very well with my own teaching methodology, I personally feel that the some of the procedural knowledge (methods) as taught in the Onsponge Books are quite cumbersome and rather lacking in fineness as they seem geared towards higher ability students who already have a working knowledge of problem solving and are just looking for a boost to fine tune the nuances of their problem solving capability. For other students who are still in the process of improving their problem solving skills, the way the books are structured has an unfortunate and unintended side-effect (if not taught correctly) of encouraging rote learning and blind application of methods (based on how the child thinks the question should be categorized) without understanding that problem solving is a process where the means is very much as important as the ends.
While I do use the Onsponge books for my students because the questions are excellent (on par with top schools math exam questions), I do not use the methods as taught in the examples as I feel that once the child has read to understand the questions and can apply the same conceptual knowledge to questions with different contexts, the child should then be allowed to apply his innate reasoning and analytical skills to present whichever methods he so chooses in a clear and concise manner under my personal guidance. Of course I fine tune and tweak each child's methods to make them clearer and more presentable and after which, I would then show a couple of alternative methods to my students to expose them to different though processes to deriving the answer and in so doing strengthen their grasp of the concepts. I also have a habit of making my students present their though processes (all the way from reading the question to getting the final answer) to the rest of the class as I find that it helps the student's metacognition (thinking about their own thought process) and allow me to spot any inadequacies in the child's mathematical thought process or errors in their conceptual knowledge which can be improved further.
Anyway, Mr Ammiel Wan left the teaching service sometime last year (his last appointment was vice-principle of Rosyth Primary) and has started \"Visible Math\" (http://www.visiblemath.com.sg) with Mr Steward Teng (former HOD) and other HODs and Teachers. He has also recognized that the Onsponge books are heavily geared towards Paper 2 Maths and has published a series of workbooks in 2011 called \"Visible Thinking in Mathematics\" available in Popular which are aimed at helping weaker students improve their basic mathematical concepts through the use of the Cognitive Conceptual Approach and while the answer sheets contain quite a number of glaringly obvious errors at least in the Pri 5 books that I use for my students (it is the 1st edition after all), I feel that the books are a must have for any student wanting to use them as a spring board to improving their basic math concepts before proceeding onto acing their problem solving questions.
Yours
Zhou Shicai
NickleBee Tutors
91884710
http://www.nicklebeetutors.com
Update : Mr Ammiel Wan has recently released the GetMeThinking Math Books which are currently on sale at his Education Centre \"Visible Maths\" -
KSP:
any good maths assessment on pattern?
Hi,
You may look at \"Go For A* - Vol 2\".
You can browse through the book at any Popular Book store.
![](\"http://i39.tinypic.com/11m5lio.jpg\")
The first 6 chapters deal with patterns, and skills that will help you solve patterns questions.
Hope this helps.
speedmaths.com
. -
Between Fabien Ng’s Problem Solving Skills (PSP) and Andrew Ng’s Challenging Problem Sums, which is considered the more challenging book? I am looking at P2 level.
Thanks. -
[quote=\"NickleBee Tutors\"]Review of the GetMeThinking Math Books (Ammiel Wan & Steward Tang; Visible Math, 2013)
by Zhou Shicai (NickleBee Tutors)
January 2013
Any idea where we can buy these books? Don't think they are available at Popular yet. Thanks. -
mwchua:
The books are sold at Visible Maths. The add and contacts can be found here.NickleBee Tutors:
Review of the GetMeThinking Math Books (Ammiel Wan & Steward Tang; Visible Math, 2013)
by Zhou Shicai (NickleBee Tutors)
January 2013
Any idea where we can buy these books? Don't think they are available at Popular yet. Thanks.
http://visiblemath.com.sg/ourlocations.html -
Hi all,
Anyone here ever purchase assessment book from Onsponge? I bought some books via their website since 17 April, according to their website, I should be able to receive my purchase within 3 working days via courier. However, I have yet to receive my books till this day.
I can’t find any contact number in their website, sent messages thru their website contact page and also thru their facebook, no one seems to response until I threatened to write in to CASE, then a guy called can told me that he will sort out the issue within 24 hour. But, he didn’t get back to me. I am not able to contact him as his contact no. is a confidential number.
Anybody had such similar encounter with Onsponge?
Regards. -
you can purchase the books either from Sin Ming or
Goldhill.
Goldhill centre : 201B Goldhill centre, Thomson Road, S(307 637), Tel: 6252
5138
Sin Ming centre : 6 Sin Ming Road, #01-10 Sin Ming Plaza Tower 2, S(575
585), Tel: 6456 7212
The opening hours of the two centres are as follow:
Goldhill Centre’s –> Mon to Fri: 3 pm to 8 pm
(Closed on Wed)
Sat: 9 am to 6 pm
Sun: 12 nn to 5 pm
Sin Ming Plaza’s –> Tue: 4 pm to 9 pm
Wed: 4 pm to 7 pm
Fri: 3 pm to 8 pm
Sat: 12 nn to 6 pm
Sun: 12 nn to 6 pm
each book is about 15$
explenations and examples are much better than onsponge. I bought the p4 one. both are goodones -
Can someone please tell me where can I get on sponge books for P3?
If your school sell, please let me know also. You may PM me.
Thanks a lot.
Cheers.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login