Problem Solving

When in the real-world do you ever encounter a worksheet of naked number problems?  If you have, outside of a school setting, please let me know.  Math is everywhere in the real-world, but it is always within a context.  Usually we don’t have all the information we may need to solve the problem, often we have too much or unnecessary information.  Problem solving needs to be a goal.  NCTM refers to problem solving as a process standard.  The how we should be teaching mathematics.  Remember back to when you were in math class.  We always did the first thirty naked number problems and then we had two problems at the bottom of the page that the teacher would often allow us to skip. If you didn’t get to skip them, it was pretty clear that you just needed to find the numbers in the problem and do the same computational procedure as the first thirty problems.  This fear of story problems needs to stop.  As early as Kindergarten, students should have problem solving in math daily.  Yes,  I said daily.  Cognitively Guided Instruction is the BEST math instructional strategy and philosophy that I have ever been exposed to.  You need to check it out.