The Answer Is....

During Math Rotations, my students move through a Problem Solving station.  While I have them working on their Two Ways of Problem Solving, I also wanted them to think about how math works just a bit.

So, while searching on Pinterest (of course!), I came across this pin and I just *knew* that I wanted to incorporate something like this in my room.  Here is my interpretation of what I saw.

On Monday, I place an answer onto the pocket chart.  I have been starting simple so far and have done "5 hats" and "9 dogs".  Well....let me rephrase that....I started with what I *thought* was simple ;)

To set up the board, I put the answer I am looking for at the top.  Each student has an index card with their classroom number written on it.  When they have finished writing the four different ways to come about that answer (using the four different operations), the students choose their "best" question, write it on the index card and turn it backwards on the pocket chart.  This way, I know they are done AND the rest of the kids can see their ideas.  Win-win!

I gave my students a recording sheet where they had to write one addition, one subtraction, one multiplication, and one division problem.

Now, in my mind, it was clear that they had to write a word problem.  How else would you get the answer "5 hats" if you didn't have some sort of word problem involving hats?

It wasn't so clear to my students. 

They were writing regular number sentences and then just writing hats on the end.

1 + 4 = 5 hats
5/1 = 5 hats
5 x 1 = 5 hats
6 - 1 = 5 hats

Yeah...not exactly what I was going for.

I decided that a mini-lesson on key words in word problems was necessary.  We filled in a little mini- anchor chart that they can keep in their math notebooks with words that they will see in word problems. (I found this cute anchor chart that I used in my room)  Then, we wrote a few together.  This actually made it click as to what I was looking for in The Answer Is....

The next week, when the answer was 9 dogs, more and more word problems with the key words were popping up.

So many more kids finished this week!

The depth of their problems was also much better on week two.  The kids tried to be a little more creative in their math to get to the answer.

So far, I am really enjoying having this as a part of the Problem Solving rotation.  It is getting the students thinking and really realizing that there are multiple ways to arrive at the same destination!

What is something you have added into your problem solving section of your math block this year?