Promoting Questions through Math Stretches

Have you ever watched runners stretching before a big race?  They are preparing their bodies, warming up their muscles, so they will perform at optimum levels.  Just like those runners, our students need to warm-up to get their brains focused and ready for quality thinking and learning.  Math Warm-ups, or Math Stretches, are an important component of Laney Sammons’ Guided Math framework.

Teachers plan Math Stretches according to the needs of their students.  Whatever the task, Laney suggests to keep these things in mind:

• Math stretches are brief.
• They can be completed by students independently.
• They prompt students to think mathematically.
• They generate mathematical communication.

Math Stretches also provide great opportunities to promote quality questioning that will extend student learning.  In Building Mathematical Comprehension, Laney suggests two stretches that will encourage our young mathematicians to generate questions that will stimulate thinking and will clarify the task at hand.

Questions for Understanding Stretch – This stretch encourages the students to think like a teacher.  They are tasked to examine a concept and are asked – “What aspects of the concept may be confusing to others?”   Students write their questions and post them on the class’ Questions for Understanding chart.  Thinking about something from the perspective of others can open our eyes to new ideas.

What’s the Question Stretch – This stretch inspires some creative thinking.  The class is presented with a problem – but this problem has no question.  For example:

Four friends are going on a picnic.  They will pack sandwiches, apples and cookies.

After reading the problem set up, the students are tasked with writing questions related to the story that the class will answer.  Students will write their questions on sticky notes and post them for sharing.  No one may have the same question.

After the stretches, the class can gather and discuss the questions that were generated and how they helped them understand the concept being addressed.  Modeling and sharing quality questions helps to raise our students’ awareness of how they clarify and provide information that leads to problem solving.  “Questioning is the ability to organize our thinking around what we don’t know.” – The Right Question Institute

Click here to find some other Math Stretches from the Math Coach’s Corner.