There have been lots of questions about Singapore Math so hopefully a short series of blog posts will help answer some of those questions. Since I took a lot of screenshots, I’ll break it up into 3 parts. Part I (this post) will cover a day in Singapore Math 1B, using the Home Instructor’s Guide, Text, and Workbook – the core lesson only. Part II will cover the extra materials – Extra Practice, Intensive Practice, and Challenging Word Problems and how our family ended up incorporating them into our lessons. Part III will cover more about why we like the HIG book and a few differences between the Standards and U.S. Editions.

Singapore Math Part I

Singapore Primary Math Level (grade) 1 covers 19 Units. We are currently on Unit 18: Numbers to 100 | Chapter 6: Subtraction Within 100 | Lesson 2 (Subtract ones with renaming). If you use the Home Instructor’s Guide (referred to as HIG from now on), pages 98-99 will introduce Chapter 6 – informing you of the content to be covered, basic strategies used, what the child should already know, and Materials used (Base-10 blocks, Multilink cubes, and playing cards). By this time, Satori should instantly know her subtraction facts through 10, and also either know instantly (or be able to figure out quickly) her facts through 20 (such as 17-8).

singapore math 1B HIG

Before we start our lesson, I pull out our table-top whiteboard and a small bin with Place-Value blocks. We use these pretty much everyday. MUS blocks, base-10 blocks, or cuisenaire rods can be used, whatever you have and feel comfortable with.

Page 101 (on the right side) covers the actual day’s lesson: (2) Subtract ones with renaming. You can click on the image to see it larger. This lesson is mostly a review, but using numbers over 40 up to 100.

The lesson goes over a few problems, illustrating how to approach the answer using either base-10 material (our place value rods/cubes) or using number bonds. I start the lesson using our white board and blocks and put up a problem on the board. Satori usually just answers it all in her head, but to reinforce/check her solution, it just takes a moment to go through the two methods to find the solution. Here we break off one ten from the 70, now thinking of it as 13-5. We take away 5 from one of 10-rods, leaving 5 ones and the original 3 ones. That’s a total of 8 ones, plus the remaining 6 tens – which is 68. I am probably making this sound more confusing than it really is, but once you understand it, it makes it so much easier to do in your head, as Satori is able to do effortlessly now.

Then we tackle it another way using number bonds.

In the HIG, there is a shaded area which shows how to coordinate the Textbook and Workbook with the current lesson. I find this super handy.

Sometimes the HIG offers extra sections to reinforce or challenge the child further. This lesson did not.

After we do our lesson using manipulatives and the whiteboard with just the HIG, we move on to the Textbook. This is the only book that is colorful. It shows the basic idea, but never goes beyond the basic idea. I actually find this the least helpful book in the program, even though you’d think it would be the most important. We usually quickly review what we just learned in the textbook, and it is typically 1-3 pages. You can see illustrations of children thinking in their head how to approach the problem.

After that, it’s on to the Workbook to try it out on her own! For this lesson, we are supposed to do Exercise 21 on pages 169-170. Workbook pages are usually 2-4 pages.

After that, we’re done with the lesson! Yesterday our lesson just took 5 minutes, today it took 15 minutes. I schedule 30 minutes a day for Singapore Math. Sometimes I add on a second lesson, but that can get too much, so I’m trying to stop it there. We will add the extra workbooks, which I’ll cover in Part III of Singapore Math.

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