Closing Session for Day 2

Balancing Higher-Order Thinking

with Basic Skills Lesson Video Study From Singapore Classroom

Yeap Ban Har

Slides are available at

www.banhar.blogspot.com

key focus singapore

mathematics of

problem solving thinking

conceptual understanding

301 14

2

28 -

2 1

1

14 -

.0

7 0

. 5

7 0 -

0

70 tenths

Keys Grade School

Manila

Problem

How do we break 4816 up

when we are dividing it into 4?

301 14 280 -

2 1 14 -

7 0 tenths

2 1 . 5

East Coast Primary School Singapore

CHIJ Our Lady of Good Counsel

Singapore

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../../../../Videos/P1 Anchor.zip

Anchor Green Primary School,

Singapore

The lesson began with this task – which number is

bigger? Bigger by how much? This is to help

students link subtraction with comparison situation.

Jonas making number

bonds for 32.

A few observations made by observers.

• The students were excited.

• The students were usually not told if their

answer is right or wrong.

• The teacher got many students to publicly share

their answer.

• The students had to do mental math.

Some questions:

• How often does the students get to learn tricks

like this?

• Did the students asked how the trick works?

Did you observe the focus on thinking and problem

solving as well as a focus on conceptual

understanding of subtraction and the skill of

subtraction with renaming?

Anchor Green Primary School, Singapore

Review of Subtraction Procedure

6 minutes

32 = 20 + 10 + 2

32 = 20 + 12

Subtract 4 from 10

Subtract 4 from 12

Two strategies

were evident. One

of them involves

10 – 4 + 2 .

Students were given 1, 2, 5 and 8 and asked to

make numbers and subtracting the smaller number

from the larger.

There were also a few situations that we

discouraged teachers from doing – did you picked

those up?