Habit 2
Reason abstractly and quantitatively
The Mathematical Habits of Mind describe ways in which developing students of mathematics increasingly engage with the subject matter as they grow in mathematical maturity and expertise throughout the elementary, middle and high school years.Â
MHM2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
Make sense of quantities and their relationships.
Are able to decontextualize (represent a situation symbolically and manipulate the symbols) and contextualize (make meaning of the symbols in a problem) quantitative relationships.
Understand the meaning of quantities and are flexible in the use of operations and their properties.
Create a logical representation of the problem.
Attends to the meaning of quantities, not just how to compute them.
Questions to Develop Mathematical Thinking Related to Habit 2
What do the numbers used in the problem represent?
What is the relationship of the quantities?
How is _____ related to _____?
What is the relationship between _____and _____?
What does _____ mean to you? (e.g. symbol, quantity,
diagram)
What properties might we use to find a solution?
How did you decide in this task that you needed to use?
Could we have used another operation or property to solve this task? Why or why not?