It certainly has not been easy reaching the end of the first semester. Here at the DAS, our teachers have been hard at work conducting online classes for the whole of Term 2. We capped off this monumental term by offering various free online supplementary classes for the very first time, from our MLP and SES programs to our students.

The Math team has delivered by coming up with targeted topics to cater to our students’ needs. I was given the opportunity to conduct a math workshop alongside my teammate Siti Aishah from BJ8 learning centre, as well as our dedicated math interns Charmaine Chansuyco and Muhammad Faris.

We decided to work on one of the 4 Heavenly Kings in the world of Mathematics – Fractions.

It is not uncommon to see students struggle in the topic of fractions, especially with the number of rules there are to learn alongside it! We eventually settled on one of the common types of PSLE mathematics question – the remainder concept.

To ensure that our students remain engaged during this online practice, we prepared an interactive quiz on Quizizz and went through Remainder Concept word problems at 3 levels of difficulties with the aid of animations on Google slides. After which, the students were broken up into smaller groups via the Zoom Breakout room function so as to receive more tailored-instructions and assistance while working on the practice questions.

All in all, our students had a delightful time learning about the concept of the remainder and how to incorporate this concept to work out fractions word problems. Similarly, the 4 of us had fun within our mini breakout sessions with the students while scrambling around to work out the technical kinks that occasionally popped up during our Zoom lesson!

Here’s your chance to try your hand at the 3 levels of our Fractions (Remainder Concept) word problems.

Level 1

After spending 1/4 of his money on some stickers and 1/3  of the remainder on some marbles, Harry had $300 left. How much money did Harry have at first?

How to construct the bar model:

Solution

Step 1: Find the value of 1 unit

2 units = $300

1 unit = $300 ÷ 2 = $150

Step 2: Find the total amount of money at first

4 units = $150 x 4 = $600

Harry had $600 at first.

Level 2

1/4 of the people at the funfair are adults. 5/6 of the remainder are boys.

The rest are girls. There are 120 more boys than girls.

How many people are there at the funfair?

How to construct the bar model:

Solution

Step 1: Note that there are 120 more boys than girls

5 units – 1 unit = 4 units

4 units = 120

1 unit = 120 ÷ 4 = 30

Step 2: Find the total number of people at the funfair.

Total number of units = 8

8 units = 30 x 8 = 240

There are 240 people at the funfair.

Level 3

Ron spent 1/8 of his money on candy. He spent 1/4 of his money on toys and 2/3 of the remaining money on books. In the end, he has $30 left. How much money did he have at first?

How to construct the bar model:

This article was written by Winnie Wee, a Senior Educational Therapist at Sengkang Learning Centre, who is also a member of the Maths core team at DAS.