Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 44.  Today we are looking at why Making Sense is First and Computation is Second.

I’ve always been bugged by the way textbooks use word problems, but I wasn’t ever able to verbalize what I didn’t like.  Then as I was reading the new book Mathematize It! Going Beyond Key Words to Make Sense of Word Problems: Grades 3-5 by Sara Delano Moore, Kimberly Morrow-Leong, and Linda M. Gojak, they put into words what I never was able to.

There is also a book for Grades K-2 for those of you who work with the younger grades.  

These books are full of information about the different word problem types, but also about the best way to implement the use of word problems in your classroom.  In the last chapter of the book, they describe 8 shifts in instruction that we need to do if we want to build students’ problem-solving skills. One of those is exactly the reason why I don’t like the way textbooks use word problems and so I’d like to share that with you today. Get all the info here: buildmathminds.com/44