Wait! THAT isn’t right!

Hello!

Just thought I’d share a quick warm up I did with my fourth graders yesterday–nothing earth shattering, but one of those ideas that you might see and think, “Oh yeah–I haven’t done THAT in a while!”

I fairly often will do a problem and ask the students if I got the correct answer so they can cross check it with their own work.  Today I asked the students to warm up by solving 3 computation problems–one addition, one subtraction, and one multiplication . . . all review.  I showed all my work and made one small error in each one–an error similar to the type I see some of them doing!

I love the idea of linking math to literacy, so I asked the students to “proofread” my work–to really “read” it to follow my thinking.  It was interesting to see which students were able to tell that I had it wrong . . . and which students were clearly able to pinpoint what I did wrong!  Almost everyone was able to tell me what went wrong in the addition problem, but they struggled some with the other two–not in knowing that I made errors, but in their ability to clearly “critique” my math.  Give it a try!  We need them to eventually be better able to proofread their own math and troubleshoot, so the more guided practice we can give, the better!
Have a great day–division posts to follow!

Meg