Growing Problem Solvers provides four original, related, classroom-ready mathematical tasks, one for each grade band. Together, these tasks illustrate the trajectory of learners’ growth as problem solvers across their years of school mathematics.
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S. Asli Özgün-Koca, Kelly Hagan, Rebecca Robichaux-Davis, and Jennifer M. Bay-Williams
James Russo and Toby Russo
Math by the Month features collections of short activities focused on a monthly theme. These articles aim for an inquiry or problem-solving orientation that includes four activities each for grade bands K–2, 3–4, and 5–6. In this issue, teachers read the classic Dr. Seuss book The Sneetches and other stories with their class and get students to engage with these associated mathematical problems. The problems, many of which are open-ended or contain multiple solutions or solution pathways, cover a range of mathematical concepts.
Ian Whitacre, Robert C. Schoen, Zachary Champagne, and Andrea Goddard
Instructional activities designed to encourage relational thinking in primary-grades classrooms can give students advantages when they reason about subtraction.
Lisa Brooks
Math by the Month features collections of short activities focused on a monthly theme. These articles aim for an inquiry or problem-solving orientation that includes four activities each for grade bands K–2, 3–4, and 5–6. This month's article considers one way to teach children to be lifelong learners: by applying problem-solving skills and a variety of math concepts at home, including time, measurement, basic operations, and fractions.
Erin M. Meikle
For orchestrating whole-class discussions, note these suggestions to fine tune problem-solving techniques into cognitively challenging tasks.
Michelle H. Pace and Enrique Ortiz
Try introducing this easy-to-implement strategy that engages student detectives in error analysis and mathematical discourse.
Travis A. Olson and Melfried Olson
This regular department of the journal features collections of short activities focused on a monthly theme. These articles aim for an inquiry or problem-solving orientation that includes four activities each for grade bands K–2, 3–4, and 5–6. Perhaps thinking of the more than fifty national food days that are celebrated in the month of October has tickled your students' taste buds enough to work up an appetite with these word problems and learn about all the foods that our nation celebrates this month.
Annette Ricks Leitze, Toni Hillman, Peggy M. Porter, and Allison K. Overholt
Math by the Month features collections of short activities focused on a monthly theme. These articles aim for an inquiry or problem-solving orientation that includes at least four activities each for grades K–2, 3–4, and 5–6. This month, challenge your students to look for all the mathematics at the local fair.
J. Matt Switzer
Each month, this section of the Problem Solvers department showcases students' in-depth thinking and discusses the classroom results of using problems presented in previous issues of Teaching Children Mathematics. In this month's Problem Solvers Solutions, readers have a window into students' number and operation sense in the early elementary grades. Second and third graders were presented with problem-solving tasks using a hundred chart consisting of two number cards and a challenge card aligned to an addition or subtraction structure. Drawing on the structure of the hundred chart and prior knowledge, students were able to articulate their solution strategies.
James Russo
Postscript items are designed as rich grab-and-go resources that any teacher can quickly incorporate into his or her classroom repertoire with little effort and maximum impact. Start the school year right: Build on students' love for doubling by introducing exponential growth with this strategic bingo game.
