Monday, November 12, 2012

Word problems



Most of the time I spent in math class was dedicated to two things. First was learning a new skill and practice practice practice. Second was reading a word problem and deducing the correct skill I needed to solve the problem. National Council of Teachers of Mathematics refers to this as the problem-solving standard (NCTM, 2012). Becoming proficient in determining how to solve a word problem is helpful because as an adult most every time I need to use math it is presented as a word problem.  Referring to word problems as life problems may be more accurate.
             Jon Scieszka wrote a children’s book called Math Curse. In this book the main character is bombarded with math questions throughout the day (Scieszka , 1995). The questions are things such as how much time does it take to get ready in the morning? I believe children need to understand that math is something that they will use for the rest of their lives to figure out a number of problems.

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