A lot of great math questions begin with “how”.
“How would you explain…”
“How did you come up with that conclusion?”
These are conversation starters.
Our jobs as teachers is to guide a student’s understanding. There is no one right method when doing math. Math can be solved with several methods and the same answer will always appear. We shouldn’t force students to learn in one particular way. Instead, we should be encouraging them to dig deeper and find new methods.
Teachers are facilitators. We should also be encouraging students to explain their explanations and taking polls from the class to see who agrees and who doesn’t. Ask students to share their method and convince the rest of us that their method works.
This website is a math resource made for teachers and administration that I reference constantly when practicing my guiding as a teacher.. The objective of the site is to increase teachers understanding of the math they teach, deeper insight into how children best learn math, effective methods for teaching math, and increasing insight into individual learners. There are a mixture of blogs, podcasts, webinars, and a bookstore with workshops and other math related texts.
Math is a versatile subject because there is no one right answer. You just have to be able to provide evidence. A lot of us view math with a fix-mindset because we are taught one way of solving a problem and if it doesn’t click automatically we become frustrated and give up. I never even knew there were different ways to understand math concepts until I entered college.
In school I was always taught one way and struggled with the math because of that. I am sure you have to. Don’t be the teacher who forces one right method on the entire class. The score outcome will not be what you want. Instead, allow students to find methods that work for them and take a look into their thought process.