Bringing Math Content to Life in After-School

Three key ideas are central to ensuring that each practice reveals important mathematics content, processes, and concepts: Encourage Problem Solving, Develop and Support Math Talk, and Emphasize Working Together.

Key Idea #1: Encourage Problem Solving
Problem solving involves engaging students, and helping them use what they know about math facts, skills, and strategies to figure out the solution to a given problem. Research indicates that good problem solving is fostered by problems that are interesting to students, and that encourage students to ask questions and use their thinking skills. Problem solving is enhanced when students discuss a problem together and when instructors use guiding questions that encourage students to discover a strategy or solution on their own. Afterschool activities lend themselves to problem solving because you can incorporate math learning in fun, hands-on activities that students already enjoy, and ultimately increase students' enthusiasm for learning math.

Key Idea #2: Develop and Support Math Talk
When students talk about math, they are actively engaged in the learning process. Math Talk helps them clarify their thinking, construct their own meaning, analyze and interpret mathematical ideas, develop reasoning and reflective skills, make connections to what they already know, become aware of areas in which they need further clarification or explanation, and stimulate interest and curiosity. Students engaged in math talk might put ideas into their own words, explain their reasoning, present methods for finding solutions, or ask questions to clarify meaning.

Afterschool programs can increase mathematics achievement by combining social and academic enrichment. By communicating mathematically with others, students learn how to pose questions and develop respect for different ideas and ways of approaching problems. Encouraging and supporting mathematical communication also helps afterschool instructors monitor students' learning, identify misconceptions, and provide useful feedback.

Key Idea #3: Emphasize Working Together
Working together in small groups is a powerful way to support problem solving and math learning. Students are organized in seating arrangements of two, three, or four that encourage collaboration and allow them to face each other when they talk and to see each other's work. Working together is structured to ensure that all students contribute and participate in the small-group tasks. The role of the instructor is to facilitate learning, ask good questions, guide thinking around strategies, and help students understand that there is more than one way to approach a math problem.

When children work together to discuss concepts, compare ideas, justify methods, and articulate thinking, they become motivated to learn mathematics. Research indicates that working together to solve problems often supports higher levels of performance than working independently.

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