Over the next month, we will continue our focus on basic math concepts and start building on these ideas further to challenge our learning and abilities as Mathematicians! We will focus on problem solving where students will be asked to show their work and explaining their thought process. Students should learn to understand each concept and explain how they got to the answer, not just answer it. They will explain the process, strategies used and steps taken to solve the various problems. This is done through “MATH TALK.” It allows students to think deeper about the various concepts and truly understand what Math is and how it is connected to the world around us. It is important that students can solve the problems, but also explain the ‘how’ and ‘why’ as well. Please have these conversations with your students as they complete their Math homework. Challenging the way they think and talk about Math is an important part of their learning.
Students will be asked to answer questions such as:
How do you know?
What strategy did you use?
Can you draw a picture to prove that?
Can you explain what I taught in a different way?
Students will explain how they grew as a Mathematicians by responding to the following:
Share a math word you learned and what it means.
Describe a mistake you made and what you learned from it.
Explain how you challenged yourself today.
Students will start their sentences with:
I solved the problem by…
I can check my answer by…
I discovered that…
The strategy I used was…
Another strategy that you could use would be…
