Math Problem Solving

We value giving children the opportunity to problem solve and think critically.  A group of 2^nd graders met once a week to tackle problems such as: “How many feet would there be in our room if all the people living in your houses came to our class at the same time.” Or “If I found 50 cents in a parking lot and had to share it equally between 3 people how much would each person get?” It was interesting to see how some children chose to you use drawings, others numbers and some just needed to talk it through. We paid special attention to what children did when they got stumped. Did they get frustrated, try again or ask for help? The 50 cent problem was probably the most challenging. After half an hour of working on this, children came to an answer using different paths. One child drew pennies in the corner of her page, until she had distributed 50 pennies. But that presented a problem when she realized that everyone didn’t get the same amount. What to do with the left over pennies! Another child took a guess and suggested each person would get 15 pennies, but then after figuring out there were pennies left to be shared, he decided it should be 20 pennies each. Then he went down to 19, then 18, then 17 and finally 16 pennies each.