Mental Math Grade 6 Teacher's Guide
Mental Math Grade 6 Teacher's Guide
Mental Math Grade 6 Teacher's Guide
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When introducing a new strategy, use the chalkboard, overhead or LCD<br />
projector, to provide students with an example of a computation for which<br />
the strategy works. Are there any students in the class who already have a<br />
strategy for doing the computation in their heads? If so, encourage them to<br />
explain the strategy to the class with your help. If not, you could share the<br />
strategy yourself.<br />
Explaining the strategy should include anything that will help students see<br />
its pattern, logic, and simplicity. That might be concrete materials,<br />
diagrams, charts, or other visuals. The teacher should also “think aloud” to<br />
model the mental processes used to apply the strategy and discuss<br />
situations where it is most appropriate and efficient as well as those in<br />
which it would not be appropriate at all.<br />
Explaining the strategy should include anything that will help<br />
students see its pattern, logic, and simplicity. That might be<br />
concrete materials, diagrams, charts, or other visuals.<br />
In the initial activities involving a strategy, you should expect to<br />
have students do the computation the way you modeled it. Later, however,<br />
you may find that some students employ their own variation of the strategy.<br />
If it is logical and efficient for them, so much the better. Your goal is to help<br />
students broaden their repertoire of thinking strategies and become more<br />
flexible thinkers; it is not to prescribe what they must use.<br />
Your goal is to help students broaden their repertoire of thinking<br />
strategies and become more flexible thinkers; it is not to prescribe<br />
what they must use.<br />
You may find that there are some students who have already mastered the<br />
simple addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts with<br />
single-digit numbers. Once a student has mastered these facts, there is no<br />
need to learn new strategies for them. In other words, it is not necessary to<br />
re-teach a skill that has been learned in a different way.<br />
<strong>Mental</strong> <strong>Math</strong> – <strong>Grade</strong> 6 9