Singapore Math Strategies: Model Drawing for Grades 1-6

In this professional development course for teachers, you'll get the training you need to start teaching model drawing, the powerful Singapore Math strategy that gives word problems a visual context. As a teacher, you know that many students groan when it's time to solve word problems. Why is that? Are the problems too difficult? Do students get lost trying to decipher the wording or figure out the computation? Do they simply not know which strategy to use? Actually, it's a combination of all these issues. Luckily, model drawing, a Singapore Math strategy for working word problems, will help your students start to enjoy math in a way they may never have before.

The secret behind model drawing is that it gives students a concrete, reliable set of seven steps that they can use to solve 80% of the word problems out there. They won't have to memorize 20 different techniques and know when to use which anymore. Instead, they'll learn how to read the problem, determine its variables, draw a unit bar (the visual model), adjust that bar, place the question mark to indicate what they're solving for, do the computation, and write a complete sentence at the end.

Does it sound too good to be true? This six-week course will prove to you just how effective model drawing can be in your classroom!

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be Anni Stipek.

With over 23 years in education, Anni Stipek has taught every grade from kindergarten to eighth. While all the grades and subjects provide their own challenges and rewards, math is the subject that Stipek fell in love with . . . the same subject that was causing her students so many problems. So she turned to a Singapore Math seminar for some answers. A few days later, she was hooked on this revolutionary curriculum that gets real results. Over the years, hundreds of teachers and students have learned Stipek's Singapore Math secrets.

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Requirements:

Internet access; e-mail; and the Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox Web browser.

Syllabus:

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

All courses run for six weeks, with a two-week grace period at the end. Two lessons are released each week for the six-week duration of the course. You do not have to be present when lessons are released. You will have access to all lessons until the course ends. However, the interactive discussion area that accompanies each lesson will automatically close two weeks after the lesson is released. As such, we strongly recommend that you complete each lesson within two weeks of its release.

The final exam will be released on the same day as the last lesson. Once the final exam has been released, you will have two weeks to complete all of your course work, including the final exam.

Week One

Wednesday - Lesson 01

Do your students get frustrated when it's time to solve word problems? Perhaps they find the process confusing or can't seem to figure out what the problem is asking. In our first lesson, you'll discover a wonderful solution to this common problem—it's a Singapore Math strategy called model drawing, and it give students seven reliable steps that will help them solve just about every word problem they encounter.

Friday - Lesson 02

Are you ready to learn about our seven steps? With model drawing, we begin by reading the problem. Then we determine our variables, make a visual representation of the problem (the model), adjust that model for problem information, place our question mark to indicate what we're solving for, do the computation, and write a final sentence. Guess what? It's really simple! We'll go over all of it in this lesson.

Week Two

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Whether you teach first grade or sixth, it's helpful to know how to solve basic addition problems with model drawing. These are great learning exercises for older students because the computation is simple, and they can focus on the process. But these problems are also part of the basic curriculum for younger kids. In this lesson, we'll solve a variety of addition problems.

Friday - Lesson 04

Subtraction word problems can be pretty tricky. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of what goes where, and other times, it's confusing to do the math itself. Which number do you subtract from which? Today, you'll find out how to harness the power of a visual model that shows students how the subtracted quantity fits into the problem.

Week Three

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Remember those problems where Sally types 62 words per minute and you had to figure out how many words she types in 15 minutes? Well, guess what? These problems don't have to be as hard as they seem. In fact, in today's lesson, I'll show you how easy it is to show each quantity in our model drawings.

Friday - Lesson 06

Now that we've mastered multiplication problems, it's time to discover their cousin. Division word problems are often the ones students stumble on the most, but after today's lesson, you'll soon be gliding through them with ease. You'll even discover how to solve those tricky before and after scenarios.

Week Four

Wednesday - Lesson 07

If you have half as much fun taking this course as you do going to a theme park, how much fun will you have? A lot! Today we'll tackle fraction word problems that are easy to visualize with our unit bar model. You'll be amazed by how much a simple model can help students understand complex fraction concepts.

Friday - Lesson 08

If you've ever needed to figure out how many miles you'll get out of a few gallons of gas, you'll appreciate today's lesson on rate word problems. You'll learn how to set up the two different things we're comparing in a typical rate problem (like miles per gallon or cookies per plate). You'll soon be breezing through even the most complicated rate problems-like how long it takes to fill a pool with a hose that puts out 8 gallons per minute.

Week Five

Wednesday - Lesson 09

Now that you've discovered rates, let's talk about their close friend: ratio problems. Let's say you have 3 candy bars to my 1, and Jill has 2 to your 3. That's a 3:1:2 ratio. If I have 16 candy bars, how many do you have? These problems don't have to be any more complex than multiplication problems—it's all about finding the base unit and working from there. You'll learn how in this lesson.

Friday - Lesson 10

Do you ever find yourself calculating the bill before your check comes at dinner? Or perhaps you keep a running total in your head as you throw items in the shopping cart at the market. Well, decimal and money problems are so much a part of real life that we've got to figure out a practical, reliable way to solve them. Get ready for a fun-filled lesson.

Week Six

Wednesday - Lesson 11

The nice thing about percent problems is that most of the time, you're not working with more than 100%. A school can't have 115% students, and a pie can't have 200% pumpkin filling. With our handy percent ruler (a great model drawing trick), these problems become a snap. Let me show you how in today's lesson.

Friday - Lesson 12

Now that you've learned how to successfully integrate model drawing with so many kinds of word problems, today we'll go over how you can take all of this information into your classroom. It's all about introducing model drawing the right way, doing lots of practice before you present the lessons, and giving students ample opportunities to learn with you and on their own.

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