in the singapore maths, for 43 – 27 you would say there were 4 boxes, 30, 13, 20, 7 and get to 10 and 6 = 16.
Sb suddenly said to me, but mummy, I don’t do it that way now, I say the difference to 10 is 3, and another 3 is 6 when i take the ten [you get the drift?] so I think she must now have cracked it.
My bean finds the Singapore way very confusing too. She now does the sum in her head and fills in their silly circles afterwards!
Singapore way seems hopelessly complicated although thinking about it, it is sort of how I’d do it (3-7 doesn’t work so borrow 1 from 4 to leave 3, 13-7 gives 6, 3-2 gives 1 so it’s 1 in the tens column and 6 in the units)
SB’s way makes perfect sense, can I borrow her to teach Aprilia for me!
I think it seems complicated to us because we can shortcut the process, but all it really is doing is breaking it down into more steps, SB was quite happy with it though. But it’s only a stepping stone isn’t it.
At one point I did try showing here how you could short cut the process but she didn’t get it, but she is obviously movign on of her own accord.