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Mystery 3 Description |
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The activities involve the mainstay of the American math curiculum--number and inference (with a lot of emphasis on arithmetic)--but they do so in a way which is likely to be completely new to users.
The principal activity is gathering and generating and using information about numbers, testing hypotheses about numbers and making inferences about numbers and number principles, skills which are mandated by states Math Standards and by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in terms of success in mathematics and success in business and in life.
The activities were extensively field-tested with school children and adults. A wide variety of users were successful with all of the activities. Many students whose thinking strategies were very well developed but whose tolerance for memorized rote procedures were challenged and delighted by the activities. Students who had little succes in school math activities were often more successful than their high achievement peers.
In sum, Mystery Three deals with issues of importance--number and problem solving and inference--the heart of much of mathematical thinking.
Mystery Three challenges users to be active--to invent ideas, to try them out and if necessary to revise them. (Mistakes, by the way, are okay. The user is always given the chance to revise a hypothesis or a conclusion if he or she wants to do so.) Mystery Three addresses principles of number in a new and engaging way. |
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