How-To Article
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Four Habits of the Math Mind
Learn about four essential math strategies your students should apply when solving problems in high stakes tests.
There are four great math habits your students should be encouraged to incorporate automatically into their problem-solving strategies. These problem-solving strategies can be used in their everyday encounters with math as well as on high stakes tests.
Draw a Diagram
Draw a Diagram
Creating a visual representation of a problem will help your students break it down and understand it. This will also help your students determine a plan for solving the problem by helping to identify the critical parts of the problem.
Break Apart the Problem
Break Apart the Problem
An effective technique for attacking a challenging problem is to break it apart and analyze the problem and its parts. This will help students identify any missing or extraneous information, as well as the necessary information. Consider having your students practice just breaking apart and analyzing some problems, and not solving them.
Use Estimation
Use Estimation
Encourage your students to use estimation as a problem solving technique. Your students should always begin tackling a difficult problem by estimating a range of reasonable answers. During high stakes testing this will help your students narrow down possible correct responses, and will help your students identify if they have come up with an incorrect solution.
Check that the Solution is Reasonable
Check that the Solution is Reasonable
Checking if a solution is reasonable and checking a solution for reasonableness in the context of the problem is something that should not be overlooked as an important step in the problem solving process.
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