Questioning
Using effective questions when talking about math, supports the development of your child’s mathematical reasoning. The use of questioning provides children with opportunities to share and clarify their ideas, draw conclusions, and explain and explore new strategies. With good intention, we often rush to provide our children all the information they need to solve a math problem. By giving your child this information too quickly, they may not think deeply about the problem or engage in mathematical processes.
Here is a list of questions you can ask to support your child’s mathematical thinking:
How did you solve the problem?
What did you do?
What strategy did you use?
How did you estimate what the answer could be?
What would happen if …?
Tell me what is the same? What is different?
How do you know?
How did you know where …?
How did you know which …?
How did you know when …?
How do you know your/our answer is reasonable?
Would this work every time? Can you/we think of any examples that don’t work?
Have you/we found all the possibilities? How do you/we know?
What have you/we discovered about __________ while solving this problem?
What have you/we learned?
Activities:
Primary/Junior - Math Before Bed
Show your child an image and ask them “What do you notice? What are you wondering about?”. This promotes mathematical thinking - and then you can have them investigate one of their wonderings and come up with a solution. What a great time to ask them the questions above to really uncover what they are thinking!!
What do you notice?
What do you wonder?
(Image and problem taken from https://mathbeforebed.com/2018/04/26/broken-cracked/)
Junior/Intermediate - Would You Rather Math
On this site, there are a variety of scenarios that your child will be able to make a choice and use reasoning skills to justify their mathematical thinking.
Whichever option is chosen, justify your reasoning with math!
(Image and problem taken from http://www.wouldyourathermath.com/dice/)
To find out what your child will learn in math this year or to find other fun activities that you can do together as a family, please also visit the YRDSB Mathematics website homepage. Be sure to also try our Problem of the Month.