The easiest way to purchase the books is either from your child's school book shop or directly from http://www.onsponge.com.


When purchasing directly from the onsponge website, you will be able to choose between a number of partner tuition centres for collection - Marine Parade and Upper Thomson. Additional centres located in Bukit Timah, Hougang, Jurong, and Tampines will be set up later this year.

Alternatively, you can choose to have the books delivered to your home although it is expensive due to the charges from Singapore Post.

You may find 2nd hand books at other locations as suggested in previous posts but certainly not new books.

onSponge Team

@sleepy


It is mainly (85%) focused on problem sums ie the conceptual side of math rather than the computational side. However, because the schools progress at different rates, we find that some effort is required on the computational side. For example, we will teach percentage and ratio earlier than the schools to give them an edge on problem solving techniques. For P3 and P4 there is still a fair bit of computational for topics such as Area & Perimeter, Angles, Time, Mass, etc. For P5 & P6 the percentage of effort on computational mathematics decreases.

With regards to the \"types\" / \"ability\" of students, there is merit for most levels of ability with exception of the really week (below 20) or those really really strong GEP. The question is, which group gains the most benefit? In my person opinion, those below 20 should be looking at one-to-one tuition rather than group so particular issues can be addressed at the child's unique pace. That said, we do have a few classes with students between 20-40 marks trying to bring them to a pass. These classes are few in numbers and have less students per class 4-8. We do not publish these particular classes and try to arrange them based on the demand from parents. For these classes not all onSponge methods are taught and the classes move at a slower pace to ensure the kids understand.

For the average student (40 - 80), the classes aim to teach concepts and provide sufficient practice and exposure to more challenging questions to move them to a B, A or A*. Most kids move up a grade or two over the course of a year. Of course not all do and some will decline for various reasons. For these students, a little more patience is required while we work together to determine the cause for the decline.

For those that are 90+, it is really about efficiency and exposure. This level ability typically have a solid foundation and want additional challenge compared to what is offered in school or past year papers. For this group we have 'bonus' questions to push them forward. That said, for this level there is a high probability that they will be able to answer most questions without guidance and really you are paying for that extra few percent. You need to think twice about spending money (at any centre) for those few extra points. Perhaps it is worth it perhaps not. For me, if my daughter was getting 95%, I would have her involved in some sports programme rather than trying to get 98%. But we each have our own objectives

I hope that has given you a little information. You can always speak to us directly to discuss your child's particular situation and whether or not the classes will him/her.

@bud & @puzz...zzle


Given your kids marks, I would agree that the generic one day workshop may not be necessary. That said, we do get kids with marks above 90 attending for the following reasons:
- the school they attends does not teach them the heuristics / onSponge methods
- additional practice and re-enforcement with more challenging questions as we can pace for this group of kids using 'bonus' questions designed to challenge the faster kids
- fun and motivation through competitions, etc.

It can be challenging to move the class (14-24 kids) forward when each child learns at a different pace. Typically the things we do are:
- design the curriculum such that the faster paced kids will get additional more challenging questions
- provide facilitators to assist both the slower and faster paced kids. The majority of the kids move along with master coach (at the board) and the facilitators will walk around assisting the kids who require assistance (at any level). They also mark and provide feedback to all the kids.
- have individual and group based competitions allowing all kids to participate and get the sense of accomplishment
- try to split the kids up where practical into different groups based on ability. For example this year we ran 3 P3 classes at one time and split the kids up according to their marks so that we could be more flexible with the pace. This is not always feasible depending on the number of concurrent classes we are running for a given level.

As an example, I chose to take 1 P6 5-day class this June. We had one boy who was clearly ahead of the class; another boy who was highly motivated but when he got stuck on a question he immediately stopped and gave up for the rest of the day; and another we was slower than the rest of the class.
- For the faster boy, marks mid 90s, I spoke with his parents to ensure that their, his and our expectations matched as he was clearly capable of answering all our 'normal' questions, he knew the onSponge methods in school, and was self motivated. Our approach was 1) set expectations, 2) selected a subset of questions from the worksheets for him to do so we could review his approach for that style of question and offer advise, 3) provide bonus questions that challenged him each day; 4) reviewed those questions with each day to ensure that he was able to solve them.
- For the slower boy, he attended the workshop 20-40 minutes earlier each day to review the previous days work ensuring he understood the materials and solutions before moving on to the next lesson. We also provided the solutions to each question so the parents could review his 'homework' and assist before the next day if practical.
- For the child who lacked perseverance, we took a similar approach to above but also found opportunities for him to 'shine' in front of the class giving him greater confidence thus encouraging him to move forward even when he struggled. We also worked on his approach for breakdown questions so that he wouldn't get stuck in the first place.

Of course there will be times where the workshop is really not appropriate and we try to weed this cases out up front before the workshop even begins based on marks and the school the child attends.

@despmom
Are you referring to the holiday workshop programmes or the tuition?

For tuition, the class sizes range from 4 to 10 kids with an average of 6-8 students. Classes will start with a minimum of 4 students however some of our centres will opt to start with 3. For further assistance you can visit this link http://www.onsponge.com/learn/tuition-onsponge.html

For workshops we typically do not go with more than 25 kids in one group with 3-4 trainers providing a coach to student ratio of 1:6 to 1:8. The smallest sized class would be around 14 kids with 2-3 trainers.

I'll try to speak with as little bias as possible leaving others to give their opinions on its worth


It depends on a few things:
- What are you and your child's expectations?
- What your child currently knows and what he / she does not know?
- What support and actions will occur afterwards?

The workshops are focused on problem sums with some fun thrown in to keep the kids motivated. The work is based around learning a number of concepts and associated strategies. Typically we can only get through 3 or 4 concepts per day (about 1 per hour). Each concept will start with \"pre-exercises\", followed by teaching of the concepts and strategies and finishing with 4 - 7 questions to be done in class.

If he / she is already an \"expert\" on all the concepts and strategies, this will serve to re-enforce those concepts rather than introduce them. All problem sums are new ranging from easy to hard (subjective of course). For those kids who are really quick, we will have additional bonus questions that are not distributed initially.

The approach we teach may or may not be different than what some teachers explain in schools depending on your child's school of course. For example, we do not always follow the steps and methods depicted in the books. The books are flat whereas in the workshops we can interact showing tricks, tips, short cuts, hints, etc. or in some cases entirely different concepts not found in the books. Only some of this is passed on to teachers in the schools.

On the other hand, if your child has never been introduced to any of the concepts and approaches, this will be a decent introduction. However, they will need to pay attention to keep up with those that have been previously. For this reason we typically have a number of facilitators assigned in a ratio of 1 coach for each 6-8 students. This allows the facilitators to assist those kids who fall behind in some areas while the main coach manages the class.

When your child returns home, you really need to redo the questions again 2-4 weeks later to re-enforce the learning that occurred. If the child simply attends the workshop, goes home, and never uses the concepts again then it's not really the right workshop for him/her. Like all things we learn (observe, interact, and do) and we must practice (more do). If it is just to learn a couple of tricks and occupy some time, it's better to sign up for a sports programme

I leave it to others to make comments on the worth.

Chris Rogers
onSponge Team










-

Hi there,


Thanks very much for your interest in onSponge's products and services.

@mummyscopio
Glad to hear you received your books. I am a little concerned by your comment that emails were not replied to as I personally monitor all inbound emails to our help, feedback and orders channels. In most cases we reply within 24 hours but may take a little longer over public holidays.

For future reference, should you need to contact us, you can complete the contact us form located here http://www.onsponge.com/contactus.html or on the email address given on your order form.

Thanks again,

Regards,

Chris Rogers
onSponge Team

YLH88:

1) In a mathematics competition with 100 participants, the average score was 63. Given that the average score of the boys was 60 and that of the girls was 70, find the number of boys and that of girls who participated in the competition.

Hi YLH88

Another method removing \"the guess work\" that we sometimes teach our students is using a method we call Number of Units x Value of Units. Our P3 books introduce this method very successfully, however, most questions would not have negative numbers involved. Given this is related to Average, this question will be at least P5 and at this Level our students will have no problem using Number of Units x Value of Units for this question. The advantage is that it removes any guess work and is an more efficient approach.

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