Building Confidence Through Struggle

I want to thank my students and parent volunteer for a math lesson today that was so powerful for us all as a community. I jumped up and told them today was one of my favorite days with them, and they looked at me like I had ten heads. They were persevering through problem solving, writing out work, getting the wrong answers, and going back to the drawing board. So why would this be amazing? Students saw the value of writing out their work, explaining their thinking, and having math conversations.  

Math is often a subject people say they are not good at or they do not have a math mind. Let me tell you a secret. There is NO SUCH THING as having a math mind. What we need to develop are mathematical practices to help us struggle through the challenging problems. Today students used several of those practices to solve complex, real- world volume problems.

What we discovered was everyone understood what volume was and how to apply it to problem solving. However, taking the time to persevere through problem solving was a hurdle. Not every answer comes quickly. What we deduced over math class was multiplication or addition calculations and place value errors held them back from getting the right answer.

If students came to me with no work it was difficult to see their mistakes. They learned if they came up with their work together we could see where the breakdown was. Student confidence was built through struggling. We did not finish all the word problems. We did not get all the right answers. There were no tears. I believed in all my students. We did do the following:

• Made sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
•   Reasoned abstractly and quantitatively.
•  Constructed viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
•  Modeled with mathematics
•  Used appropriate tools strategically.
•  Attended to precision.

And it was beautiful to watch! One student summed it all up. "When something frustrates you it feels so good to get it right!"