Students generally dislike word problems. In my math classes I do as many word problems as possible. I’m not making them do a zillion word problems because I get some sadistic glee out of it, I do it because they need to be able to figure stuff out in the real world.
I like to say “Life is a word problem” and it’s true.
When I taught a second grade class, we spent weeks working on money. Identifying coins and bills, making change, etc. The teacher left me piles and piles of worksheets and we went through them at a rapid clip. The kids were great at doing the worksheets quickly and accurately. One day, I gave them all blank sheets of paper and posed the problems on the work sheet to them verbally.
They were baffled.
Clueless.
“When you walk into the toy store, no one is going to hand you a worksheet,” I said.
From that point on, we did our worksheets like this - verbally. And they learned how to turn the words into math sentences and solve the problems.
No comments:
Post a Comment