Category: Blog

Reported speech tells a reader what someone said without necessarily repeating the exact words. For Sengkang children, begin by tracking the speaker, the listener and the time of the report. Those details explain why pronouns, verb forms and words such as tomorrow may need to change.

Order of operations tells a reader how to interpret a mathematical expression consistently. For Sengkang families, the key is to calculate grouped parts first, then powers, then multiplication and division at the same priority, followed by addition and subtraction at the same priority. Within each of those last two levels, work from left to right.

Negative numbers are values below zero. For Sengkang families helping a child understand them, start with position on a number line before teaching sign rules. Negative three lies three units to the left of zero, and negative eight lies farther left, so negative three is the greater value.

Comparatives and superlatives help Sengkang children explain how things differ. A comparative such as ‘longer’ relates one thing to another; a superlative such as ‘the longest’ places something at an extreme within a stated or understood group. Begin by naming the things, the quality and the group before choosing the word form.

Active and passive voice change how a sentence presents an action. For Sengkang children, begin by identifying who or what performs the action and who or what receives it. ‘Hana opened the folder’ and ‘The folder was opened by Hana’ describe the same basic event while giving the reader different starting points.

Volume with unit cubes helps Sengkang children see what a cuboid formula counts. Build one complete layer, count its cubes and then count the equal layers. A solid cuboid four cubes long, three cubes wide and two cubes high contains twenty-four unit cubes, including cubes that a drawing may hide.