Republic of the Philippines

SORSOGON STATE UNIVERSITY

Magsaysay Street, Sorsogon City, 4700
Sorsogon City Campus
1ST Semester, SY: 2023-2024

Teaching
Mathematics in the
Primary Grades
(LESSON 10: MATHEMATICAL INVESTIGATION)

Submitted by:
Esquierra, Nicca
Estolas, Christine
BEED 2B

Submitted to:
Prof. Karina Belardo
Instructor
What is mathematical investigation?

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Erlina Ronda

Mathematical investigation refers to the sustained exploration of a mathematical situation. It

distinguishes itself from problem solving because it is open-ended.

I first heard about math investigations in 1990 when I attended a postgraduate course in Australia. I love
it right away and it has since become one of my favorite mathematical activity for my students who were
so proud of themselves when they finished their first investigation.

Problem solving is a convergent activity. It has definite goal – the solution of the problem. Mathematical
investigation on the other hand is more of a divergent activity. In mathematical investigations, students
are expected to pose their own problems after initial exploration of the mathematical situation. The
exploration of the situation, the formulation of problems and its solution give opportunity for the
development of independent mathematical thinking and in engaging in mathematical processes such as
organizing and recording data, pattern searching, conjecturing, inferring, justifying and explaining
conjectures and generalizations. It is these thinking processes which enable an individual to learn more
mathematics, apply mathematics in other discipline and in everyday situation and to solve mathematical
(and non-mathematical) problems.

Teaching through mathematical investigation allows for students to learn about mathematics, especially
the nature of mathematical activity and thinking. It also make them realize that learning mathematics
involves intuition, systematic exploration, conjecturing and reasoning, etc and not about memorizing and
following existing procedures. The ultimate aim of mathematical investigation is develop students’
mathematical habits of mind.

Although students may do the same mathematical investigation, it is not expected that all of them will
consider the same problem from a particular starting point. The “open-endedness” of many
investigation also means that students may not completely cover the entire situation. However, at least
for a student’s own satisfaction, the achievement of some specific results for an investigation is
desirable. What is essential is that the students will experience the following mathematical processes
which are the emphasis of mathematical investigation:

Systematic exploration of the given situation

Formulating problems and conjectures

Attempting to provide mathematical justifications for the conjectures.

In this kind of activity and teaching, students are given more opportunity to direct their own learning
experiences. Note that a problem solving task can be turned into an investigation task by extending the
problem by varying for example one of the conditions.

Throughout their time at primary school, there is a large emphasis on children applying the skills and
knowledge they have learnt to problem-solving and carrying out investigations. The thinking behind this
is that children will be best equipped to deal with mathematical situations in real life if they have
practiced plenty of these ‘real-life’ scenarios at school.

In word problems or story problems a child is given a ‘real-life’ situation and asked to solve it, for
example:
I have 56 apples. I need to divide them equally into eight different boxes. How many apples will be in
each box?

Children need to work out that the number sentence they need to work out for this is:

56 ÷ 8 = 7

Investigations differ from word problems in that there is not necessarily one way of working them out
and often the method of trial and error needs to be applied. Often, there is not just one answer; there
could be several.

Maths investigations in KS1

An example of an investigation that children in Key Stage 1 might carry out, is as follows:

Amy picks three of these cards and gets a total of 9. Which three cards might Amy have picked?

A teacher might give children number cards to help them with this. They might ask them to carry out the
investigation randomly, allowing them to choose any three cards and see if they add up to 9. They might
allow them to stop when they have found one combination, or they may ask them to find all the
combinations.

Using a systematic approach to investigations helps us to make sure we have worked out every
combination. A teacher might go through each number in turn, saying: ‘What could we add to 8?’ Then
when it is clear you could not add two numbers to 8 to make 9, turn next to 7: ‘What could be add to 7?’
Again, it is not possible to add two of the other numbers to make 9, so then you would need to try with
6, and so on. This way, the teacher is modelling that an ordered approach to the investigation means
that you are trying every possibility.

Maths investigations in KS2

Here is an example of a Key Stage 2 investigation:

Melissa baked cupcakes every day of last week, from Monday to Sunday. Every day, she baked two less
cupcakes than the day before. By the end of the week, she had baked 63 cupcakes. How many cakes did
she bake on the Monday?

Again, there is no particular number sentence or operation that immediately springs to mind when you
read this question. Instead, it is about thinking about how you are going tackle the problem and then
using some trial and error methods to work it out.

It would be a good Idea for children to write the days of the week. They could then start with any
random number for the Monday and keep subtracting 2 for each day of the week to see what they got.
Imagine they decided to start with 20:
If they then added all these numbers up, they would get 98. At this point, they would need to look at the
total number, which is 63 and realise that this 98 is too high and that they needed to reduce their initial
number for Monday and try again.

Other examples of investigations that might be given to Key Stage 2 children are:

I have two letters. One weighs double the other. Together, they weigh 135g. How much does each letter
weigh?

I have 4 coins in a row on a table. The first and second coins add up to 30p. The second and third coins
add up to 25p. The total of all four coins is 40p. What are the four coins?

I am thinking of a number. The number has two digits which add up to 8. The number is a multiple of 4
smaller than 50. What is the number?

Answers:

Melissa baked 15 cupcakes on Monday.

The letters weighed 90g and 45g.

The coins were 10p, 20p, 5p and 5p.

The number was 44.

Investigations are a great way for children to practice various mathematical concepts such as money
math, measures, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and the inverse. They also require them to
recognize and understand various mathematical terms such as total, digits, multiple, factor, double and
product.

MATH INVESTIGATIONS

Exercises, Problems, and Math Investigations

The quality of mathematics students learn depends on the mathematical tasks or activities we let our
students engage in.

Mathematical activities/tasks can be categorized into three types: exercises, problem solving, and math
investigations.

STANDARD EXERCISES

These are activities with clearly defined procedure/strategy and goal. Standard exercises are used for
mastery of a newly learned skill – computational, use of an instrument, and even new terms or
vocabulary. These are important learning activities but must be used in moderation. If our teaching is
dominated by these activities, students will begin to think mathematics is about learning facts and
procedures only. This is very dangerous.

PROBLEM SOLVING ACTIVITY

These are activities involving clearly defined goals but the solutions or strategies are not readily
apparent. The student makes decision on the latter. If the students already know how to solve the
problem then it is no longer a problem. It is an exercise. Click here for features of good problem solving
tasks. It is said that problem solving is at the heart of mathematics. Can you imagine mathematics
without problem solving?

MATH INVESTIGATIONS

These are activities that involve exploration of open-ended mathematical situation. The student is free to
choose what aspects of the situation he or she would like to do and how to do it. The students pose their
own problem to solve and extend it to a directions they want to pursue. In this activity, students
experience how mathematicians work and how to conduct a mathematical research. I know there are
some parents and teachers who don’t like math investigation. Here are some few reason why we need to
let our students to go through it.

Students develop questions, approaches, and results, that are, at least for them, original products

Students use the same general methods used by research mathematicians. They work through cycles of
data-gathering, visualization, abstraction, conjecturing and proof.

It gives students the opportunity communicate mathematically: describing their thinking, writing
definitions and conjectures, using symbols, justifying their conclusions, and writing and reading
mathematics.

When the research involves a class or group, it becomes a ‘community of mathematicians’ sharing and
building on each other’s questions, conjectures and theorems.

Students need to be exposed to all these type of mathematical activities. It is unfortunate that
textbooks and many mathematics classes are dominated by exercises rather than problem solving and
investigations tasks, creating the misconception that mathematics is about mastering skills and following
procedures and not a way of thinking and communicating.