In my last post, I talked about giving students the opportunity to puzzle about unfamiliar problems in the curriculum.  I offered the table of Common Addition and Subtraction Situations  as a source for problems.  In my book,  Use Your Math Power: Monkeys for the Zoo,  the teacher, Ms. Green, asks her students to think about one of these types of problems          

 

As her students talk about the problem in pairs, their questions and misunderstandings suggest that this is an unfamiliar problem for them.  Here is part of one of the conversations about the problem.  

 

After their “Turn & Talk”, Ms. Green has the class come together to share some of their ideas.

Once Carlos has retold part of the problem, one student asks a question about how they can begin to solve it.

 “Other kids might be wondering about that too,” Ms. Green replied.  “Can anyone help us find a way to start?”

This leads to Ellie’s idea of having 13 children stand up with 3 on one side to be howlers and 10 on the other side to be spider monkeys.  When Ms. Green asks her class if this will work, the discussion takes off.  Some think it should be solved another way.  This leads to a discussion about whether this problem has many possible solutions, which leads to them finding more combinations that work.

By discussing the meaning of the problem and how they might solve it, students develop problem solving strategies and make sense of important math ideas.  They use retelling and acting out to help them make sense of the problem.  Ms. Green’s questions and prompts move the discussion along  productively.

It is so powerful to help students use discussions, retelling, acting out, and visualizing to make sense of and solve problems.  I am wondering about your students’ experiences using these strategies.  How can we help all of our students feel confident about using strategies like these to persevere to make sense of a problem instead of wanting to be told which procedure to use?