We use Singapore Math at my school and it can be tricky. Especially our "mental math" strategies unit. Last week we worked on learning mental math strategies for addition and this week it was on scary subtraction mental math strategies.
Well, while teaching today I would work a problem and explain how we get the answer using the mental math strategy. I would then ask if anyone was confused. Of course I had some who were. But today, instead of saying it over again or trying to think of another way to explain it, an idea popped into my head. I decided we would all just pause, stare at, and think about the answer on the board and look at the process we did to find the answer.
So, we stopped. Everyone thought. (You could see their little brains turning!) And then after about 10 seconds light bulbs started turning on! Those who were confused said, "OH! I get it!" and those who got it right away were even more sure how to do it.
This is probably Teaching 101 and I'm not sure why it never occurred to me before. But praise the Lord it did today!
I know I'm the type of person that needs a few seconds to stop and just process the information presented to me, so why did I never consider this for my students?!
At the end of the math lesson everyone was in a good mood too. The students got the time to process each problem as we did it because we started doing "Pause and Think"s after every problem since it was helping. And I was happy because 1) my students understood and 2) I didn't have to stand there and re-hash over and over how to get the answer hoping and praying my words would sink in.
I will be using "Pause and Think"s a lot more now!
