A TEACHER’S METHOD TO INTRODUCE STORY-PROBLEMS: STUDENT-GENERATED PROBLEMS

The paper analyzes the method of a third-grade teacher to elicit the generation of story-problems on the part of the students throughout the school year. The teacher triggered the students ’ creativity and encouraged them to use their personal experiences and their imagination to make stories and to take into account numerical relations to ask numerical questions related to their numbers. The teacher first started with a story from her own personal experience, generated two questions from her data, and invited the students to generate new questions. Students answered all questions operating mentally with the numbers and explaining their ways of operating using natural language and idiosyncratic symbolizations. The teacher’s activity provided her with an opportunity to assess the students ’ conceptualization of numbers and their flexibility to operate with them in ways different from the use of traditional algorithms. Simultaneously, students were able to self assess their own understanding of numbers and their conceptual progress. By the end of the school year, students were willing to attempt the solutions of story-problems that surpassed the difficulty of textbook story-problem for their level. THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS Documents from different educational organizations have advocated a synergistic method for the teaching of mathematics: Curriculum and Evaluation Standards fo