Mathematical Thinking - 100 questions

Think about the questions that you ask in your math classroom. Can they be answered with a simple “yes” or “no,” or do they open a door for students to really share their knowledge in a way that highlights their true understanding and uncovers their misunderstandings? Asking better questions can open new doors for students, helping to promote mathematical thinking and encouraging classroom discourse. Such questions help students:

• Work together to make sense of mathematics.
• Rely more on themselves to determine whether something is mathematically correct.
• Learn to reason mathematically.
• Evaluate their own processes and engage in productive peer interaction.
• Discover and seek help with problems in their comprehension.
• Learn to conjecture, invent and solve problems.
• Learn to connect mathematics, its ideas and its applications.
• Focus on the mathematical skills embedded within activities.

Click here for the 100 questions from mathematics expert Dr. Gladis Kersaint to help you address these core areas and promote mathematical thinking and discourse in the classroom. For more, please download Dr. Kersaint’s new whitepaper:Orchestrating Mathematical Discourse to Enhance Student Learning.

Spectacular Math Learning Website

Trick-or-Treat -  Math Homework for the Weekend - Spooktacular -click here for problems for all levels of math learners

October 26, 2015

Topics/Content Areas: 

Percents & Fractions, Plane Geometry, Probability, Counting & Combinatorics

Ariel, Ollie and Eden are going trick-or-treating for Halloween, but first their parents are taking them to a costume store to pick out costumes. The store has 9 different costume options available – witch, pirate, cat, superhero, princess, vampire, fire fighter, zombie, clown. In how many different ways can Ariel, Ollie and Eden each select one of these costumes, with no two of them wearing the same costume?

To carry their candy, Ariel, Ollie and Eden each have a bucket that looks like a pumpkin. It is completely spherical in shape with a straight slice across the top of the bucket that creates a circular opening for dropping in candy. If the radius of the bucket is 6 inches and the height, measured from the base of the bucket to the open top, is 9 inches, what is the area of the circular opening of the bucket, in square inches? Express your answer in terms of π.

Last year, after Ariel, Ollie and Eden went trick-or-treating, they combined all their candy together and sorted it. They found that 1/3 was chocolate candy, 1/4 was hard candy, 1/5 was candy corn and the rest were fruit chews. If they had a 180 pieces of candy total, how many pieces were fruit chews?