Story Problem Tip #3

It's Tuesday, so I'm back with another tip for using Story Problems in the classroom.  

For past tips...

So, today I'm sharing tip #3 with you.  My third tip is to let students share their strategies with each other.  

Every Friday in my class we do two story problems. Both story problems are similar - meaning same type, same operation, but different numbers.  I read the first story problem to students and then send them back to their seat to solve it. 

While they're solving, I circle the room and check out what strategies they are using. I then selectively pick a few students to share their strategies with the class.  By selectively, I mean I pick strategies we're focusing on or efficient strategies that I'm hoping more kids will use. I also pick a variety. I do not typically have the same strategy shared - I choose all different ones.

Then, I have each child that I picked come up one at a time to share their strategy with the class.  The audience is supposed to pay attention and see if they can pick up  new strategies that they could use next time. This is also great for kids who didn't get the right answer or didn't know how to solve it. They can now see how their classmates did it and get ideas from them.

I normally use my iPad stand as a doc camera and project their work on the board. The child presenting stands up and explains how they solved it. Some students can explain on their own, while some need some probing questions to get all of the info out.  The pictures below are from a day when technology was not in my favor. I had the students who were picked write on the board how they solved it. While they were writing they explained what they were doing.



This tip is great for many reasons. It lets students teach each other. Students get tired of hearing us all day so it's nice when they can hear the same thing from someone else. It provides opportunities for math communication, which is a huge part of math nowadays.  It also builds math confidence.

Check back next week for my final story problem tip!

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