Math Problem Solving

Students in Mrs. Burton's class have been focussing on our problem solving skills. Developing and strengthening these skills will help students with their mathematic problem solving as well as their inferencing.
This website discusses some of the benefits to problem solving and the value in teaching it to our students. Problem Solving 

We used the CUBES acronym to help guide our focus in this process.

Students began by focussing on identifying what is being asked of them. They quickly realized that once you were your way through the first 4 steps it is easy to see that the rest of information was just being used to trick them!
We worked through numberless word problems that allowed us to not be hung up on numbers and instead focus on identify what operational clue words were within the text. The next step was to use the same numberless word problems and put numbers in them. This way students new what was being asked before having to focus on the numerical equation. We were then ready to become Math. detectives and solve a variety of word problems.

As we begin to practice and prepare for the Grade 6 PAT exams the ability to identify what is being asked and recognize what is not important will be a valuable skill.