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Competition Aims to Develop Flexibility in the Classroom

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Competitions for Young Mathematicians

Part of the book series: ICME-13 Monographs ((ICME13Mo))

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Abstract

We present a method for an implementation of Multiple Solution Tasks in the classroom in a way that should motivate students to solve problems in different ways. The method concerns a competition in problem solving for groups of students. Each group has to find and record such a solution of a given problem that, in their opinion, appears with the least frequency among the solutions of all groups in the class. For illustration, we present a few problems and corresponding different strategies which arose in the classroom and show how flexibility was demonstrated during a competition . Additionally, we discuss other benefits of including competitions in the classroom, namely creating connections among mathematical concepts and stimulating deeper understanding of concepts for students. For the teacher the method opens a possibility for developing flexibility and analysing the quality of students’ knowledge and their level of understanding of mathematical concepts and relationships among them.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract No. APVV-0715-12.

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Correspondence to Ingrid Semanišinová .

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Semanišinová, I., Harminc, M., Jesenská, M. (2017). Competition Aims to Develop Flexibility in the Classroom. In: Soifer, A. (eds) Competitions for Young Mathematicians. ICME-13 Monographs. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56585-9_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56585-9_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-56584-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-56585-9

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