Say What?

Maybe numbers come naturally to you. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to have always considered what a number was worth when computing. But not every student connects a number’s value to its appearance. Instead, some of us learn to complete paper and pencil arithmetic like we’re memorizing a dance routine. Do this here. Put that there. What it’s worth isn’t our primary concern in that case — we’re too focused on what everything should “look” like. Now, this choreographed approach might get us through a unit, but it won’t help us connect what we’re learning or remember procedures we’ll need. In the end, if we don’t make sense of what’s happening, it doesn’t stick.

But students can learn how to be curious about what a value is worth, to ask questions about how that worth changes, and to assign physical actions to the sometimes invisible operations happening on their paper. When they make these inquiries a habit, their understanding of math begins to mushroom, and they’re able to step beyond mere choreography. They transform something that used to sound like a foreign language into stories that makes sense. (And stick!)

In this video you’ll find a few working examples of how to integrate questions of “what” into your student’s universe at various levels of learning. We’ll look at teaching students what multiplication actually is (grade 3), what multiplying values that are worth more or less than one can produce (grade 5), and what happens to the fractions in our equations when they’re multiplied (grade 7).