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Do your students make sense of the math problems they solve? Or do they just quickly scan for the numbers and keywords? Sometimes we end up encouraging students to look for words like “sum,” “difference,” etc but we don’t encourage them to actually make sense of what they are trying to figure out. Here’s a 3 step approach for problem solving. Show the first slide and ask them about what they notice or wonder. Show the second slide with a bit more information. Have students talk about what they are still wondering or what question they could ask. By the time you get to the third slide students have thought deeply about the context of this problem. It’s not just meaningless numbers and keywords. This is a real life scenario with questions that need answering.

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Do you save the multiplication and division problems for your multiplication and division unit? I want to encourage you to do this type of problem solving with your students all year long - even if they are not “supposed” to be working with these operations yet. 🙌Encouraging students to use manipulatives and come up with strategies to solve problems helps them make sense of math. 💡We don’t need to teach keywords, save the addition problems for the addition unit, etc. What we do need to do is give opportunities for flexible thinking and understanding. This picture shows my second grader solving what would typically be considered a division problem. I gave her no direction and she decided to use ten frame dots to represent the bags and cubes to represent the cookies. Manipulatives made this type of problem very accessible to her. How can you incorporate flexible problem solving this week?

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Rekenreks are a fantastic way to work with numbers and operations. If you have one (or a set) collecting dust in your classroom bring them out and let the kids work with them! Seeing and working with numbers in different ways is a great way to build number sense. One idea to get started: “I wonder how many different ways we can make the number _____.”

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