What is new with Problem Solving in enVisionMATH Texas? How does it prepare students for Problem Solving on TAKS?
Research tells us that the most helpful strategy that students can use to help them understand how to solve a problem is the use of drawing pictures to represent the quantities and their relationships. In enVisionMATH Texas we have developed bar diagrams, beginning in Kindergarten, to help students represent the problem in such a way that they will be able to “see” how to solve the problem. The second thing that we have done is to teach skills and strategies together, instead of in isolation. The reality is that to solve a problem you need to use both a skill and a strategy, so keeping them separate has been more confusing than helpful to students’ success.
