1. Name of School: Raffles InstitutionAddress: 1 Raffles
Institution Lane, Singapore 575954School leader: Mrs Lim Lai
ChengStory title: Unleash the potential for Mathematics in You!Tel:
84279351 Email: [email protected] Teacher: Mrs
Heriyanti SuhaimySTUDENT INFORMATION 1) Name: Senthil Kumar Soorya
Age: 14 Grade: Secondary 2 2) Name: Muthiah Chockalingam Age: 14
Grade: Secondary 2 3) Name: Haseef Age: 14 Grade: Secondary 2 4)
Name: Jackie Tan Age: 14 Grade: Secondary 2
2. Unleash the potential for Mathematics in You! 21st 29th July
2011
3. 1. A child in Singapore undergoes six years of primary
education, comprising a four-year foundation stage from Primary 1
to 4 and a two-year orientation stage from Primary 5 to 6. At the
end of Primary 6, students sit for the Primary School Leaving
Examination (PSLE). It was noticed that students struggled during
the PSLE Mathematics Examination and this was very disturbing.
There were pupils who could not finish the paper on time and they
were crying in disappointment after the paper. So we decided to
change the situation of the students by improving them in
Mathematics so that they are prepared for the PSLE standard of
questions.2. A few solutions were derived after the team brainstorm
for ideas and getting feedback from teachers. The first solution
was to teach the students in a fun way by incorporating games
during the Mathematics lessons to motivate students. The team
believed that engaging students in this manner during lessons would
motivate them to do better. Students tend to remember things better
when they have fun and are more engaged. The second solution was to
ask students in groups to take turn to make a presentation of the
lesson taught. The teacher will teach the students in the normal
way. However, instead of the normal way of assessing their learning
through tests and exams, they are tested in a creative way. They
would be required to make a presentation on the lesson that was
taught. The presentation would be just a short one and would
include whatever the students had learnt during the lesson. From
their presentation, the teacher would be able to know if they
students had understood the lessons. Prior to the presentation, the
students would be asked to read up on the topic. This method would
enable students to have a chance to revise the topic and they would
remember the topic better. The last solution was to break the
complicated Mathematics word problem into simpler concepts and
manageable parts. By breaking the word problem into simpler
concepts and having a question on each concept, the students would
be able to finally complete the complex word problems. A pre-test
and a post-test consisting 5 very complex word problems would be
used to measure the effectiveness on this method.
4. 3. The participants were 39 primary five students aged
between 10 and 11 years. These students were chosen because of the
mix ability nature of the group as their Mathematics marks ranges
from 50 to 91 in their Semestral Assessment 1 examination. They
have also gone through 5 years of Mathematics lessons in school and
their opinions on the method of teaching of Mathematics would be
invaluable. Even though the number of students we chose was small,
our efficient method might be used by more schools, hence impacting
a large group of students. The modified teaching method basically
breaks down multi-steps or complex word problems into basic
steps/concepts that help scaffold students understanding so that
eventually they will be able to handle the word problems in the
complex form. Pupils were given a pre-test which consist 5 complex
word problems on topics students have difficulties in under exam
condition prior to the implementation of the project. The main aim
of this pre-test is to gauge the students ability in solving
complex word problems before the implementation of the modified
teaching approach. The pre-test was not given and none of the
questions were discussed with the students. The modified teaching
approach was implemented over a period of two weeks. Students were
given five worksheets consisting 4 questions where the last
question in every worksheet is similar to one question in the
pre-test worksheet. The first 3 questions in all the five worksheet
were scaffolding questions to help pupils break down the fourth
question into simpler steps and concepts. For example, if question1
of the pre-test tested the concept of changing fraction, balancing
ratio and changing percentage, then the worksheet 1 would have a
question testing each concept and the last question will be similar
to the question 1 of the pre-test. Students were given only one
worksheet per day and a time frame of 30 minutes to complete the 4
questions. This is to simulate exam conditions. After students had
completed the worksheet, the team split the class into groups of 8
and along with the teachers help; we taught each group on how to
avoid
5. careless mistakes and explain the concepts that the students
were not very clearwith as well as the answers. This was to ensure
that the pupils understand howto break the complex problems into
simpler steps and concepts. The splitting ofthe class enabled
better monitoring of the students learning. We could focus oneach
student and hence maximize learning.After students had completed
the five worksheets, a post-test was administered.The post-test had
exactly the same questions as the pre-test to ensure thevalidity
and reliability of the instrument used to measure the effectiveness
of themethod.