EDMA241 Blog Week 11
The handball court and the playground are two things that almost every school has. Because of this reason I chose them as the stimuli to some open ended questions that would get the students thinking about measurement and space. Not only would an image like this allow students to observe and think but and activity could allow the children to go outside and extend their learning in their physical environment. Open-ended questions are a good tool in encouraging mathematical thinking and improve problem-solving skills. Not only are open-ended questions ones with multiple answers but they “offer students multiple approaches to the problem by placing little constraint on students’ methods of solution.”(Hancock, 1995) This means that the questions allow children to think outside the box and approach an answer at different angles. With that in mind my first open-ended question is: Explain how you would go about making room for one more court on the playground. This question is designed to get children thinking about space and creating more space for another court. Students may present answer that talk about how they could measure, resize the courts, shift the courts around or extend the playground. The second open-ended question is: Find ways to redesign the court so you can fit as many as possible inside the classroom. This question asks the students to begin thinking about another area and possibly changing the shape of the court so it could fit inside a classroom. The children would need to measure and/or visualize the handball courts inside the classroom they are sitting in. My third question is: If we were to cover the court in tiles how many tiles would we need to cover the whole thing. This question comes with the presenting of three differently shaped and sized tiles that the children can decide which ones to use and how to use them. Thoughts such as the space between each tile or overlapping may become apparent to the children.
Hancock, C. L. (1995). Enhancing mathematics learning with open-ended questions.
The Mathematics Teacher
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