March Journal Summary #2

Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. The Value of Guess and Check by: Shannon Guerrero

This article is about using guess and check to help students truly understand word problems and be able to better represent and understand quantitative relationships. Most students are very intimidated by word problems because they do not always understand what the problem is asking and then do not know how to set up the equation to go along with the problem. By guessing and checking their answers they will hopefully be able to reason their way to the correct answer. Guess and check allows students to use logical reason and problem solving to come up with the correct answer. The article also suggests using a guess and check table so students can see where their guesses take them and can decide whether to make them larger or smaller. Guess and check encourages reflection on the original problem, development of algebraic statement, and determination of the reasonableness of a solution. This can also be used at any grade level.

I found this article pretty interesting because I have never really thought of guess and check being an actual strategy. It's nice to see how guess and check could actual help a student to understand a math concept. When I was a student I always hated when my teacher's told me to just guess and check an answer. In my classroom I feel I will want to explain to my students how guess and check can help them. If I had this in my classroom I may not have been so turned off from it. It's good that this article was written to show teachers a way to help make word problems not as intimidating to their students.