Click here for more information and to register for this 30-hour asynchronous course that provides teachers with five research-based strategies to help students with learning disabilities think and reason mathematically. Participants will leave:
o Understanding what it looks like when students reason mathematically—quantitatively, structurally, and through repetition.
o Knowing five essential strategies to engage students, support their development of mathematical thinking, and develop independence.
o Ready to support each and every learner to develop as mathematicians.
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I’m wondering about why this one has decimals rather than fractions. The strategies I came up with all relate to the notion of the 0.5 as 1/2, and I don’t see 325 / 5 as “obvious” of a shortcut. So I’m wondering what the goal is with this problem using decimals.
The goal here is for math doers to this structurally by chunking, changing the form, and connecting to math they know. So students who “change the form” of 32.5 and/or 0.5 to a fraction equivalent to make the numbers easier to work are thinking structurally. Some may also change the form of the numeric expression, as you mentioned, to 325 / 5. Another approach might be to change the form of 32.5 to 30 + 2.5, and then divide each “chunk” by 0.5. or…
I could also imagine students connecting to what they know about division and asking themselves, “how many 1/2s are in 32.5?”.