The first image I posted was the story problems that go along with the work shown in the other pictures. This sample is from their math book. The first problem the teacher worked on together with the students. She showed them different examples of how to solve these problems. She went through each example with the same numbers and had the class copy down what she was writing. She asked them questions along the way to see if they understood how to fill out the chart. I have not seen the students work on story problems in the classroom before so I was unsure of how well they would understand the problems.
The second story problem asked the students to solve for a word problem in two steps. As long as the students showed their work in the space below, they were able to solve the problem however they knew how. The teacher went through the first half of the second word problem with the class and had them pick out what they felt the best way possible. She had the students raise their hands to share with the class how they solved the first part of the problem. The choices they were given to solve the problems are doing a Change problem where you have a starting number and an ending number and you have to find the change (positive or negative). The second way they could solve the problem was Parts and Total. The larger space is for the total and then there are two smaller squares left for them to fill out the parts of the total. The third way to solve the problem is Comparison. It gives them a larger quantity box and a smaller quantity box and the students have to solve for the difference. Depending on what numbers the word problem gave the students they all seemed to choose different ways to solve the problem.
The students work shown in the second picture shows the student solving the first part of the problem using comparison and getting an answer of 42 by showing their addition at the bottom. The next part of the problem they choose to solve it using change. They plugged the numbers into the spaces provided and wrote at the bottom that they counted back in order to get their answer. This work shows that the student understands how to use different methods for problem solving. The understand that just because you are given certain numbers it doesn't necessarily mean that they can all be plugged into the same equation. They show an understanding of where the numbers need to be placed in order to solve the problem.
I think it is important that teachers provide their students with these different strategies in case they struggle with one or the other. I think it is especially important for story problems since they can be very difficult for some students to pick out the important parts of the problem. Sometimes story problems give you more number than you actually need but for the second graders they are given only the information they need in order to have an easier time solving the problem.
You do a good job setting up and describing the task, but try to be more specific about the actual work the student did. What is the big idea for this task? How might you anticipate that a student would approach this task? How did this student approach this task? What does that reveal about their understanding / thinking about the big idea of this task?
ReplyDelete