Solution plan as a strategy to support students in modeling mathematics

This research is a descriptive study that aims to describe the role of the solution plan as a scaffolding that helps students to solve mathematical modeling tasks. The subjects in this study were 32 students of grade VIII of Junior High School number 3 Ngaglik. Data collecting using observations and documents. The data collected in this study is in the form of field notes and students’ worksheets. During the learning process, students are given a worksheet about modeling mathematics and equipped with a solution plan, and then the researcher makes observations. The study results found that the solution plan can be used as a scaffolding to support students solve mathematical modeling problems, where the solution plan consists of four stages: understanding tasks, searching mathematics, using mathematics, and explaining results. The solution plan facilitates connecting students’ imagination with the context of the problem and connecting prior knowledge needed to solve mathematical modeling problems through questions or statements that do not directly lead to answers.