Comments

I can show you how to do this!

I will post it soon. I just figured out yesterday how to bar model this -- for my stepson, who's preparing for the SAT.

-- CarolynJohnston - 06 Jun 2005

Dear all, I am a regular user and a registed one at that, but I could not find the one post I made. So, I am just trying this. I use Singapore math with my own kids and I use the word problems for tutoring. My son has learning disabilities and I tutor kids with learning disabilities. My son cannot draw at all!!! Not even the bar diagrams used in Singapore math. So I am teaching him to use equations with symbols. It may take longer, but he will never get it the other way.

Anne Dwyer

-- AnneDwyer - 07 Jun 2005

Hi Anne, this post made it! I'm sorry you've been having trouble posting (please let me know if it happens again: carolynj@kitchentablemath.net).

We would love to hear more about how you are using Singapore Math to teach kids with learning disabilities! Is there something about the curriculum, do you think, that makes it especially suitable?

-- CarolynJohnston - 07 Jun 2005

Anne--Hi!

I'm sorry about the registration difficulties----sigh.

If you have time, keep us posted on your work with Singapore Math. I'm very interested.

Thanks!

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jun 2005

Another quick thought: I'm having Christopher do one bar model problem a day.

He can't draw the bar models, either, or at least he couldn't when we started.

I draw them for him. I have him tell me what to draw; then I draw it.

I've done that with the Saxon Math problems, too: I'm his 'hand.' I have him tell me exactly what numbers & operation signs to write down and where.

I've kept an eagle eye out to see if this was hurting him.

Would he be able to do problems at school?

On tests?

Without his mom sitting there taking the 'handwriting load' off his brain?

(There's a fair amount of interesting research showing that handwriting practice and instruction can improve a child's work, because -- say it again! -- once you achieve automaticity in anything the 'brain effort' needed to perform a skill declines dramatically.)

Anyway, I was concerned that by giving him the advantage of not having to 'multitask' (i.e. do math and handwriting at the same time) I wasn't preparing him to do problems at school.

However, he's been fine. Maybe he'd do even better if I didn't help him in this way, but I'm defining 'mastery' as 90% success on tests, and that's what he's (mostly) doing.

He often, now, will simply grab the pencil away from me because I'm too slow. So he's switching over to doing the writing himself as he gets better at math (and better at handwriting).

The same thing is just starting to happen with the bar models.

He couldn't draw them at all, at first.

So I had him watch me, and give me instructions.

Now he's starting to draw them himself. (And remember, we're doing just one a day, if that.)

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jun 2005

One last thing.

Singapore doesn't seem to mention this, but I have Christopher do all his bar models on graph paper.

That way he's got lines to follow, but it's also much easier to create 'equal groups' when you've got paper that's already been divided into equal squares.

I would have had a terrible time learning how to do bar models myself without 'quadrille' paper.

-- CatherineJohnson - 07 Jun 2005

progressreport progressreportsingaporemath

-- CatherineJohnson - 16 Jul 2006