Mathematical Investigation
See also: teaching-mathematics, rich-mathematical-tasks, mathematical-thinking-tasks
The core of mathematics is problem-solving and modelling the world around us.
reSolve approach#
Goal of inquiry is to encourage students to
- wonder,
- ask questions,
- seek patterns and explain solutions.
Seven components of mathematical inquiry (Inquiry maths)#
Question, notice and wonder#
- Students attempt to understand the prompt by making an observation.
- Think individually before pairing up to share.
- Each pair feeds back a question or comment to the class.
- Teacher aims to draw out relevant knowledge
| Posing questions | Notice and wondering |
|---|---|
| What does ... mean? | We notice that ... |
| Is it right than ...? | We know that .. because ... |
| How is it true that ...? | We think that ... because ... |
| Why is ...? | We wonder whether ... |
| Would it be ... if ... ? | We can change ... |
Establish aims and plan actions#
- Reviews questions and observations, perhaps think aloud, perhaps commenting
- Students in pairs select a regulatory card and justify to a class how they'll direct the inquiery
Explore and conjecture#
- Students decided on period of exploration: generating more examples, find a case, make/test a conjecture
- STudetns work toward forming a generalisation
Construct understanding#
...