Friday Math Homework Review

On Fridays we take time to review the math homework for the week. For the daily homework, I often draw on Primary Math Problems of the Day from Creative Publications and Marcy Cook. Problems include estimation problems, as well as ones that direct students to make a drawing that shows the solution and to write an equation for the problem.

When we review the problems, I ask students not only to share their answers but to share the strategies they use to get those answers. It helps them learn to put their math thinking into words and lets them see that there are often different approaches/ strategies that can work. For example the estimation problem this week was to estimate how many students in our class have a piano. Several students articulated (each in his/her own way) that they thought of particular students in the class who they knew had a piano and then added some more, thinking that if these students had one that there were probably some others they did not know about. Another simply said he knew some had pianos and some did not, so he just guessed a number that he thought was not too big and not too small. Interestingly, I thought that students who had a piano at home would be more likely to give a higher estimate, but this was not always true.