Word Problems reflection

 Personally, I do actually think I've had a slight shift in my approach to word problems. Before looking at the word problems of Egyptians I would think that students would be hesistant to attempt word problems. Part of this is because students are taught math from a numerical standpoint, instead of as it being a "science". It is similar to the scientific method in that we make a decision after making our observations. For example, even in the ancient times, the Babylonians would make observations of the passage of the moon or planets. Moreover, the Egyptians would try to make estimations using for example the false position technique and they would use guess and check.

I think that before attempting the algebra, now when I teach word problems, it would be important to get the students to also interpret the problem using words just as the Egyptians did with the loaf interpretation word problem. In a way, this code be pseudocode for math.  .Then shortly thereafter, I would ask them to make a hypothesis as to what the answer could be or a range for the answer. I would also ask them about units ahead of time.


Comments

  1. Susan GerofskyNovember 30, 2024 at 1:30 PM

    Good thoughts, Zain. I suggest you might need to remove some or all of the numbers though, if you want your students to really engage in estimation and sense-making with word problems! Otherwise, many students unfortunately just apply an algorithm, do an *exact* calculation, and then round it to appear to be an estimation! If they do that, they have really not estimated or made sense of things! Check out Jo Boaler's new book and online talks about "Math-ish" to get some helpful suggestions on getting learners really to estimate!

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