Model Drawing Since the early 1980s, a distinguishing characteristic of the math taught in Singapore—a top performing nation as seen on the Trendsin International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) reports of 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007—is the use of “model drawing”. Model drawing, often called “bar modeling” in the U.S., is a systematic method of representing word problems and number relationships that is explicitly taught beginning in second grade and extending all the way to secondary algebra. Students are taught to use rectangular “bars” to represent the relationship between known and unknown numerical quantities and to solve problems related to these quantities. |
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