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Here is a Chinese saying 十年磨一劍 (Taking ten years to sharpen a sword.), it has been almost 20 years since I published the first math contest workbook in 2002 This workbook is one-of-a-kind and world's first, I believe. In the past 20 years, I created many workbooks, and the reason is that I could not find suitable teaching materials to use at my after-school learning centre. Why I created another workbook this time? It is because there is a need for it. Let me explain. I created the following workbooks in the past:
1.Basics
2.Math IQ puzzles
3.Math and Chess Integrated workbooks using my invention of Symbolic Chess Language (SCL)
4.Math IQ Fitness
5.Integrated math, chess, and puzzles for the creative minds
6. Math Contest
The trouble is, with every class, we have diversified students with different levels of math ability. Some of them could participate in the discussion. Some of them were always quiet. They do not get full benefits from the discussion style of teaching. So, I discovered the method of student collaboration and the teacher coaching method only makes sense when students are at the same level as the playfield. Otherwise, the star will always be a star and others tend to fade away with no ideas to discuss at all. How to handle this condition of teaching? I need a good arsenal of workbooks. For those who can do math contest quality problems, I give them Math Contest books; for those who need to boost their brain thinking skills, I give them Math IQ Fitness; for those who do not like play competitive chess, I give them chess and math puzzles; for those who are falling behind, I give them Basics workbooks. The result is many students end up with 4 to 6 workbooks on their desks. The assignment marking also is a nightmare. With the 2-hours of math teaching, I need a variety of teaching materials, much like the entertainment variety show. It would be boring if the singer continuously sings for 2-hours. The same reason for keeping up the interest in teaching math to elementary students, they need varieties of teaching contents, so I decided to combine some of my workbooks into one that is why this combined workbook is so huge, larger than most of the math workbooks you would find on the market.
This workbook is designed to teach in very small class sizes, preferably 4 or 5 students, so that students could get lots of opportunities to discuss with the teacher. One-on-one teaching would be ideal because the student gets 100% attention constantly.
This workbook can be used in enrichment class because it includes many contest quality problems and thus could also be used for preparing math contests. It includes many mathematical puzzles so that it could be used as a fun math teaching workbook. It includes many mixed computations and advanced word problems, so it could be used for chess clubs while teaching chess lessons. The use of this workbook is multi-faceted.
The series of "Ultimate" workbooks were written after many years of teaching experience. Thus some articles in the workbooks referring to the teaching experience happened many years ago.
