John SanGiovanni never fails to leave us with routines that we can all implement in our classrooms the next day. We hope you did! In this Roundtable session John shared with us routines that could improve the thinking and reasoning behind problem-solving, especially around word problems.
In the six routines that John discussed he made some valuable points:
- Go deeper with one problem. Acquiring problem-solving skills doesn’t mean doing a lot of the same type of problem, it means going deeper with one problem. The routine Same and Different is a simple way to implement this practice in your classroom.
- Want to integrate data throughout the school year? Apply real world problem-solving at its finest? Through the routine, Same Data Different Question, students are challenged to take multiple perspectives with the same data set, eventually being challenged to write their own problem to be solved. As John says “Challenging kids to write the problem, makes them better problem solvers.”
- Commercial strategy games incorporated into the classroom build opportunities for students to think strategically outside of the context of a math question and develop the skill of taking risks in problem-solving. Although these games are available online, John mentioned how important it is to get students playing face to face with each other as opponents.
All of the routines John SanGiovanni shared with our wonderful audience are moments in a math class that will build the muscle for problem-solving. We hope you have found at least one to incorporate in your daily or weekly routines.
Thank you for joining us!
Be sure to join our December session with Dr. Yeap Ban Har!
