How to help your P4 & P5 child understand the Assumption method for Primary Math

If you’re a par­ent to a P5 stu­dent, you may be famil­iar with the Assump­tion method used to solve prob­lem sums for Pri­ma­ry Math as your child would have encoun­tered it for the first time in P4. If you’re a par­ent to a P4 stu­dent, this will be some­thing new your child will encounter this year.

From our expe­ri­ence, we have noticed that most P4 stu­dents strug­gle to under­stand the method, while P5 stu­dents may be able to apply the method. How­ev­er, more often than not, the P5 stu­dents have com­mit­ted it to mem­o­ry rather than under­stand­ing the con­cept. This is because the Assump­tion method is typ­i­cal­ly the first heuris­tic skill that a Pri­ma­ry stu­dent will be exposed to, mak­ing the tran­si­tion from sim­ple arith­metic sums to more com­plex prob­lem sums a chal­leng­ing one.

For­tu­nate­ly, this tran­si­tion does not have to be a dif­fi­cult one which stu­dents find daunt­ing. At Think Teach Acad­e­my, we believe in part­ner­ships with par­ents and work close­ly with our par­ents to give our stu­dents the best pos­si­ble chance to suc­ceed. Over the years, we have pro­vid­ed our par­ents with Math teach­ing resources and guides so that they can help their chil­dren at home with their revi­sion. Here is what a par­ent has to say about the resource:

In this arti­cle, we would like to help all par­ents to under­stand the Assump­tion method indepth­ly so that you can help your child, whether P4, P5 or even P6, to under­stand how to apply the method rather than sim­ply mem­o­ris­ing it. While mem­o­ris­ing the method will gain your child the marks at P5 lev­el, this will no longer be effec­tive in P6 as Assump­tion ques­tions in PSLE tend to vary in dif­fi­cul­ties and forms. Thus a stu­dent would need to mas­ter the skill well in order to con­quer all Assump­tion ques­tion types.

Here is a short video along with its PDF doc­u­ment to explain first­ly, how to iden­ti­fy basic Assump­tion ques­tion types and sec­ond­ly, how to apply the ADD tech­nique to solv­ing it. In our worked exam­ple, we have pro­vid­ed a sim­pli­fied ver­sion of an Assump­tion ques­tion so that you and your child can bet­ter under­stand the tech­nique. Enjoy!