Strategy to promote mathematical reasoning: Get your child to reason and communicate his solutions to you
Some parents may be wondering why there is a need for the child to reason and communicate his solutions to you, especially the correct ones. Do you know it’s possible that your child has managed to solve the problem correctly even with misconceptions? Have you felt exasperated when you realise that your child does not know how to do a question similar to one that you have gone through just a few days ago? Why does this situation occur?
Children sometimes memorise the steps involved without understanding the rationale behind the method. Then when they do a similar question some time later, they may not be able to recall the steps.
Let’s look at a lower primary example below.
Question - Planting Trees
Some trees are equally spaced out along a road. The distance between the 1st and the 5th tree is 20 m. What is the distance between the 1st and the 10th tree?
Correct solution:
20 m ÷ 4 = 5 m
5 m × 9 = 45 m
Common misconception:
20 m ÷ 5 = 4 m
4 m X 10 = 40 m
If we just mark the questions without analysing the child's misconception, we may just get frustrated. We may just make this comment, "I thought we have done this type of question before?" However, if we get the child to communicate his reasoning, we will realise that the child cannot relate the concept of intervals or gaps between the trees to the distance between the trees. Don't be surprised if your child who is in the upper primary and weak in Maths cannot answer this question wrongly too.
Drawing a diagram will be extremely useful in this case. The child will get to realise that there are four intervals between the 1st tree and the 5th tree.
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