- Use of concrete experiences and materials (e.g., visuals, manipulative materials)
- Give students time to manipulate and work with physical objects and visuals
- Children need to make mathematical models to represent and solve problems
- Require them to predict, measure, reason, describe, analyze, evaluate, make decisions, communicate, etc. their thinking and solutions
- Justification of thinking
- Create their own way of interpreting
- Writing about mathematics
- Questioning and making conjecture
- Use of calculators and computers
- Guiding individual, small-group, and whole-class work
- Tasks and problems must be mathematically significant, cause students to be involved, and engage them in thinking
- Open-ended problems and extended problem-solving projects
- Pose math problems in authentic contexts
- Word problems with a variety of structures and solution paths
- Students must be helped to make connections between their informal math knowledge and formal mathematics
- Seeking and helping students seek connections to previous developing knowledge
- Build strong conceptual foundations
- Systematic development over time
Understanding is crucial if students are to learn, retain, and use knowledge to solve problems
- Developing number and operations sense
- Learning of skills is increased when instruction stresses understanding and builds on conceptual knowledge
- Use a variety of techniques: mental, estimations, calculators, reasonable paper and pencil
- Students must be active participants in building their knowledge-exploring, discussing, reflecting, connecting
|
