Rationale
Young children are naturally curious and have a desire to make sense of their world.(3) Even before they realize what they are doing, they are involved with quantities and different relationships involving quantities. They come to school with intuitive ways of thinking about and doing mathematics. They use these early skills that they have acquired to solve problems. It is evident from the lack of positive results on standardized test performance that the ways in which we have been teaching children about word
problems - and possibly even mathematics as a whole - have been disconnected from their understanding of what math is and the relationships between and among numbers.
Learning mathematics involves learning ways of thinking. It involves learning powerful mathematical ideas rather than a collection of disconnected procedures for carrying out calculations.(4) I believe that all children were born with the ability to do math. One thing that children must do for themselves is maintain the positive attitude and belief that they can do math. It is the teachers' jobs to make sure that this attitude and belief of the students is nurtured. Math must be nurtured with a supportive learning environment that promotes risk taking and creativity. It must also be one that focuses on problem solving.
A classroom that focuses on increasing students' proficiency with problem solving will also be increasing the critical thinking skills of those students. Word problems can serve as a context in which to learn mathematical concepts. Experiences with word problems can provide a meaningful bridge for connecting classroom mathematics with real-world mathematics. Word problems can be used as a basis for application and a basis of integrating the real world in mathematics education. They can provide practice with real life problem situations, motivate students to understand the importance of mathematics concepts, and help students to develop their creative, critical, and problem solving abilities.
The rationale for creating this unit is to help my students become more proficient word problem solvers. I have seen students become intimidated and frustrated with word problems because they are not able to "break them down" and understand what is being asked. As I expose students to a variety of addition and subtraction word problems, I expect them to become fluent in solving word problems. I also expect them to become able to create their own word problems.
I want to clarify to readers and implementers of this unit that there are some lessons that I am certain that I will have to conduct to prepare for the ones that will be mentioned in this curriculum unit. I may have to conduct some of these lessons over the course of the entire school year based on the achievement level of individual students. I have had several students enter my classroom lacking the necessary technical skills to complete operations such as addition and subtraction with regrouping. There are some students who will even need additional assistance and clarification with adding and subtracting numbers without regrouping. I will need to make sure that these students know about place value, and its role when we are adding two and three digit numbers without regrouping.
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