to ask your child when working on math...
Good Math Questions to Ask Your Child
To make sense of mathematics:
- How did you get your answer?
- Tell me what you are thinking.
- How would you explain this to friend who doesn’t understand?
To help predicting, inventing, and problem solving:
- What would happen if…?
- Is there a pattern? What is it? Why not?
- Can you do it a different way?
- What is the same or different about your two ways of doing this?
- Will it be the same if we use different numbers? Why or why not?
To rely more on themselves:
- Does it make sense to you? Why or why not?
- What do you think?
- What would seem more reasonable to you? Why?
- How can you check to see for yourself?
- What do you want to do next?
- Can you draw a picture or build a model to illustrate the problem?
To help with reasoning:
- Will what you did always work this way? How do you know?
- Do you see a pattern? What is it?
- How could it be done a different way?
- Can you explain your reasoning?
- Could you explain this in another way?
- What other numbers will work?
- Are there some numbers that will not work? How do you know?
- Write a new problem that is different in some ways but the same in others.
- Why do you want to change your answer?
To help connect and apply mathematics:
- Have you ever solved a problem like this before?
- Tell (or write) a story problem that used this kind of mathematics.