Building Confidence in Math: A Singapore-inspired Approach

2. Aim: helping to make your child become a confident mathematician

3. Today we are focusing on Number, as this underpins everything we do in Maths. • Counting • Ordering • Addition • Subtraction • Multiplying • Dividing • Sharing • Doubling

4. CPA Maths Our approach to the Singapore style of teaching Maths.

5. Step two Step three – avoid until Year 2 Step one – most important! Pictorial Concrete • Abstract

6. We spend a lot of time on understanding numbers. If a child has a solid understanding of the numbers 7 and 8, it is easier to solve sums like 7 + 8 = 15 as you need to know that you need a 3 from the 8 to round the 7 up to 10 and then that leaves 5 left of the 8 to add on to the 10.

7. Understanding teen numbers

8. You can help at home with number facts • Practise regularly but for short periods at a time – fingers are good for concrete apparatus • Make it fun by playing games! • Help your child design their own number facts poster and display it in their room or on the fridge • Take advantage of real-life contexts such as shopping, laying the table, planting seeds in rows, organising and sharing out toys or snacks, etc. to help you introduce number facts into everyday life

9. Maths is all around us and at home make maths real and part of everyday life. Time, cooking, shopping, shape, money, time tables, fractions, problem solving, When helping: • Don’t just tell the answer or say how to do it. • Give prompts. • Ask questions- how would you do it? Can you break the numbers down? • It’s all about working out what the problem is and what you can do to solve it.

10. Things to practise at home • Show me X fingers! • Number bonds • Number of ten • Doubles (Y R/1= up to double 10, Y2 = expand double 3 = 6 so double 30 = 60) • Counting in 1s, 2s, 10’s, 5’s, (Y2= 3s, 4s) • Counting backwards! • Odds and Evens • Y2 Times tables

11. We don’t use the column method for adding in Years R, 1 or 2!

13. There’s more than one way… …to get to the right answer. • As long as the answer is right- there is no right or wrong way. • Our job is to help children work out the best way for them. An efficient method and one that helps them with their understanding. • In one classroom you could see many different methods being taught and employed to solve one problem. • Having a range of methods helps children improve and check their accuracy.

14. A Wall • Maths Learning is like building a wall. • Children learn lots of different individual skills which like individual bricks build up together to make a proficient mathematician. • If a brick is wobbly or loose it may be specific skill that needs to be retaught or improved to strengthen the whole wall.

15. At a Glance: • Maths today is about understanding number patterns, not learning by rote. • Saying "I was bad as maths too" is one of the worst things you can do as it lowers children’s own expectations of themselves. • There is always more than one way to get the right answer. • Children are taught mental strategies, like using number lines, to figure problems out in their heads. • When helping ‘ask’ rather than ‘tell’ to support learning. • Learn and Practise times tables • Please do talk to us if you feel your child needs more help when they really struggle with homework.

16. And finally- Never Say… “I’m bad at Maths!” Remember you are your child’s biggest role model so saying this may make them feel it is okay for them to be bad at Maths and therefore that they do not need to try.