Teaching Students Math Strategies

I have really struggled all week with thinking about the project based approach to math employed by the teachers of Phoenix Park. I don’t know if it is my primary teacher instinct, but I cannot get my head around teachers’ just assigning work and having students go at it with no direction, no deadlines and offering help only to those students that seem interested.

In my classroom (grade 1) I too present problems to my students, many times a day in fact. Anything I can turn into a math problem I seize the opportunity. When students attempt to solve problems I always have them share how they figured it out. I will ask students to share if they have figured it out in a different way. I think that students need to feel comfortable in being wrong, in taking time to think things through and in solving using different strategies. I also stress to my students the importance of not telling peers’ answers, but letting them have “think time” to try to solve independently.

Of course there are always students who never attempt to solve independently or contribute to math discussions. I feel it is my responsibility to work with these students to find out what they know. Lack of participation or lack of written output does not mean lack of knowledge or understanding. I work with these students, giving hints, providing manipulatives, or scaffolding the problem.

Finally, I do teach my students strategies to solve math problems. Whenever I present a problem I remind them of ways that they can help themselves to solve it. I want them to see that using strategies that work for them is the way we figure things out. I see that my little students need to develop a comfort with working out math in the way that suits them. Showing them strategies helps them with this. My young students will hide their hands under their desks if they need to count their fingers, I tell them that counting fingers is the right thing to do if that is what you need. When trying to name the next number in a sequence many students will look away from number charts because they think they should know, I tell them to use number charts if that is what works.

I use a balance of traditional and reform based teaching of mathematics. I feel it provides for optimum learning.