Term 2 Week 2 Problem Solving in Math

Reading for Team Meeting this week was called

Teaching Values Through A Problem
 Solving Approach to Mathematics

                                                          Teaching value through Math

Essentially the article was about real life problem solving, about solving problems that were a real context and therefore making the math meaningful and purposeful. Not just problems that sounded realistic, but actually require the students to use math to find a solution to actually had. 

• equipping students to meet the challenges of life
• developing general knowledge and common sense
• learning how to be discriminating in use of knowledge, that is to know what knowledge is appropriate to use for what purposes
• integrating what is learned with the whole being.   

The context comes first and then the math comes out of the context so students need to employ a range of skills and strategies, not just within a topic e.g learning addition. 

A good read and thoyght provoking. I use the problem solving approach consisitently, but not in the context based approach as was suggested. Could be a direction to explore further.