Singapore Placement?

[krazzymommy]

I am trying to figure out where to place my son in Singapore, can you help?

We are halfway through Beyond, which is why I'm considering 1B, vs. just starting 1A. He has completed quite a bit of traditional, textbook math. He has his addition facts memorized, as in you can drill them quickly. He can do subtraction, but doesn't have them memorized and it takes some thinking. He just took the 1A placement test. He completed the test right at 80%, which Singapore would consider passing. He missed most of the subtraction questions, as well as some of the problems where an addend was missing: ___+3=13

He has been through so much math, that I'm hesitant to put him at the beginning (1A), but he definitely lacks the critical thinking skills that I know Singapore enforces, as well as he's not up to speed on his subtraction facts. So, for those of you who have been through the program, should I go ahead with 1B, or should we start at 1A?

[MomtoJGJE]

Hmmm... I'm not sure what I'd do really....

What if you started him at 1A, but went through it quickly? Just to let him get a good grasp of how singapore works?

[pjdobro]

That's a tough call. It sounds like you could move onto 1B and see how he does, but would that be best? I like Lora Beth's idea of possibly doing 1A, but doing it at a quicker pace just so he could get the feel of Singapore math. I think that would also give him confidence and that is a great thing. If you went ahead with 1B, he might struggle a bit more and that could hurt his confidence. Another idea might be to get the 1A workbook, go back through the activities in Beyond and look for the ones on subtraction and finding a missing addend. Do those activities and corresponding workbook pages, but don't worry about completing the ones on addition and other areas that he is confident in already. After doing that then move onto to 1B.

When we started with Singapore, my dc could do the math in 1A fairly well and knew quite a bit of the 1B stuff as well, but we decided to go ahead and start in 1A. We did what Lora Beth suggested and moved more quickly through those and did 1A, 1B, and some of 2A that first year. It worked out well for us because the next year, we needed to slow down a bit as we finished out 2A. I think you could go either way. I would consider how your son feels about math and if he is confident and eats it up, perhaps you could try just moving directly into 1B only reviewing a concept or two from 1A as needed. If on the other hand, he struggles or isn't as thrilled with math, then I think I would step back a bit and allow him to gain some confidence in the Singapore way and start at 1A.

[krazzymommy]

Okay, I'm not opposed to going back through 1A; does anyone use the Standards Edition with HOD? I actually have 1A in the standards edition. The pages don't line up with the activities, so I'm thinking I'll just buy the other edition so we can line up with the activities Carrie suggests. Anyone have any insight on this?