During Math, we are using different strategies to help solve story problems. This week we have been focusing on the part-part whole mat. Students find parts of the problems to plug into the mat. This then helps them visually see the story problem answer.
We have use the actual paper mats and unifix cubes to manipulate story problems, but I noticed that when students saw a part-part whole mat on paper, they did not connect the two as being the same. So I decided we would use some white boards to help practice solving problems over and over and over.
Our goal is to get a base foundation in understanding the math behind the problem rather than just solve the algorithm. We practiced with simple problems: "There were 3 birds in a tree. 2 more birds flew to the tree. How many birds are in the tree now?" The kids could do this just fine. They saw that the 3 birds, plus 2 more birds equaled 5 birds altogether.
However, when we had a missing part, the kids struggled when asked to solve. The problems below show student work in solving the following problem: "There were SOME (missing part) butterflies at the garden. 5 more butterflies flew to the garden. Now there are 8 butterflies in all. How many butterflies were in the garden to begin with?"
Students could not just put 5 and 8 on the two parts. They had to figure out that there was a missing part. We discussed the information the problem told us, decided how to solve it, and checked our work.
I am really impressed with this group of kids and their math abilities!
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