Let Kids Figure It Out!

There are some educators & parents who think that ‘GOOD MATHS’ in the classroom looks like  a teacher demonstrating & explaining single specific math concepts  in a step-by-step fashion to students. Followed up with lots of worksheets & even homework to practise what they have been shown! A very ‘Traditional’  and quite a wrong picture of  good maths!

Here is a great read I found on ‘The Conversation’ by  Monash University Professor of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, Peter Sullivan, that shows this is really not the case, but rather a demonstration of factoid rote learning…

In his Research Prof. Peter Sullivan highlights the importance of :

1. Posing questions that allow students to work on their own approaches to solving the math problem.
2. Questions that focus on more than one mathematical concept at a time (time & angles)
3. More than one answer to the question
4. The questions are appropriately challenging

Here is a question examples:

‘The minute hand of a clock is on two, and the hands make an acute angle. What might be the time?’

So I’m guess your thinking ‘Nothing New’ then… but the punchline in his research was that the kids themselves responded better & dare I say it .. even Enjoyed Math when it was done like this!

Read the complete article here…