There is More to it than Guess and Check

Guerrero, Shannon M. (March 2010). The Value of Guess and Check. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 15, 393-398.
Main Idea/author’s thinking: Guess and check is a powerful problem-solving strategy that helps students make connects from conceptual understanding to algebraic representation. From the method Guerrero has described, students are first required to break down the word problem into it’s components by identifying what they know and what they are trying to find. The next step is to guess values for what they are trying to find and see if it fits the information given. If it doesn’t, then another guess is to be made based on the previous guess. They are to guess until they find an answer that fits all the information given. As they guess, they are to use a table format to organize the information given and the guesses they have been making. The final step is to use the guess and check method to make algebraic representations for the information given. Guerrero claims that it is easier once a student has already figured out the answer to then relate the information given to a symbolic representation. She also believes that through the process of guess and check, students will better learn how to decompose words problem. Thus, better understanding what each word problem is asking.
Though guess and check may be helpful in some situations, I think there are better methods that can be used to help students with solving word problems. Guess and check is helpful when you don’t know how to solve a problem, but it’s not very helpful when the problem is more complex and possibly has to do with fractions. Guessing the right fraction between 0 and 1 can be hard because there are an infinite amount of possibilities. The process of guess and check that Guerrero refers to may be helpful to some, but I think there are more concise ways of breaking down a word problem without have to use guess and check. I think organizing the information similar to the way Guerrero has suggested is a great way to break down a word problem, but I do not think it is necessary to use a guess and check system. That could be skipped so that the next step would be to represent the information given in an algebraic expression, and solve for the unknown(s). Through Guerrero says guess and check can be very effective when first learning how to deal with word problems, she admits that it is not very effective later on when dealing with more complex problems. I think that if you start to teach students through guess and check, they will not want to move on from that. Through that process, they get the answer through guessing first, what more is needed… There would not be much need for algebra after that in a child’s eyes. This also would lead to the problem that some students might start to think math is a game of guess and check. There are obviously better mathematical ways of solving a problem than guess and check.