Exploring Maths Sentences

One of the key words that a student wrote down when thinking about the word 'problem' in our CI was a sentence.

I then used this to drive the next lesson by asking my students "What is a maths sentence?" They worked in groups and then collectively to write a word problem in to a 'maths sentence or equation'.

Today I gave them these word story problems from nrich.maths.org site.

1. Karla had 8 dolls. She gave 3 of them to her little sister. How many dolls does she have now?

2. It was Toby's birthday he had 6 birthday cards. The postman bought some more cards for him and Toby now has 9 cards. How many cards did the postman bring Toby?

Student reponses were 8-3=5. All were pretty comfortable with that...we moved on.

This problem was a little more problematics, but GREAT.

Here were some of the students thinking.

When we came back to reflect as a group we debated which of these two sentences were correct?

Option 1: 6+3=9
Option 2: 9-6=3

There were many confused looking faces and lots of arghhhhhh!

I asked which sentence gave us the answer. Most agreed with option 2 as it best matched the question. Most also agreed that option 1 better reflected the story.

One student then popped up (a student who normally doesn't pop) with " Hey they are connected!"

I said, "What do you mean?"

The two equations are CONNECTED, but how? I replied.

The rest of the class joined in. You can use one equation to show the word story but use another to find the answer. There's a CONNECTION!

I was stoked! (kiwi for happy)

Wow, I said as I then reminded them of the Central Idea: Number operations are connected to each other to help us solve problems.

I am new to this Maths Inquiry thing, but I think my class and I are on our way.