Another issue that we are encountering this year is, being an ICT class, we have students that struggle with multiple strategies taught and while we are exploring these strategies and exposing them to this, it is evident they are becoming confused and tend to gravitate to the one strategy they are most comfortable with.

It is so important to stand by the fact that procedural fluency doesn't equate to fluency of understanding - metacognitively).

This means there must be a 180 degree shift in the way we teach our students, the way we model and utilize strategies. In addition to this, when it involves special educators, there must be a shift in the way they write goals in the IEPs.

Please post 1 or 2 ideas that you took away from this chapter or that you would like to explore further.

Decomposing numbers flexibly is also an essential to second graders as they work to add and subtract efficiently. I'm glad this is built in to many of our Number Routines. I will continue to emphasize alternatives to decomposing by place value. Many are already doing this flexibly.

When they discussed students who have a strategy knowing their facts better than students who do not approach math work with a strategy in mind that was powerful. It is very interesting how in reflecting on the use of fluency, it is more important to focus on fluency with strategies than fluency with facts, which should be referred as a child's automaticity with facts.

I totally understand that some of the computation can be done mentally but I like to see my students show all their work, especially when they are first learning a new strategy. I find that when students show their work they can find a computation or operation error quicker.

On the other hand I can understand that requiring students to show all their work at times can become laborious.

I also found #5 Do not ask students to solve a problem two or more different ways, would be included on the list. While I don't regularly ask students to show 2 ways, I do ask them to use another way when they get the wrong answer so they can start to recognize where a mistake was made.

I found Chart 4.13 particularly helpful, not only for teachers but also for students. This chart could serve as an effective scaffold for students who struggle to choose or apply different strategies, as it helps them organize their thinking. For example, when solving a multiplication problem, students can decide whether it makes sense to break apart numbers, use doubling and halving, or compensate.

Additionally, I appreciated the reflective questions posed in the text, such as “When might you use a counting-up strategy for subtraction?” These types of questions would be valuable discussion prompts in the classroom, as they help students connect specific strategies to the operations and problems they are solving. This kind of discussion reinforces strategic reasoning and supports the development of flexible fluency.

I find it very reassuring that Reveal is helping us help students to learn all of these new strategies.

The seven strategies are:

1. Count On/Count Back-using incremental counting to solve addition and subtraction problems.

2. Make Tens- structuring numbers around 10 to simplify addition.

3. Use Partials- breaking numbers into parts to support addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

4. Break Apart to Multiply -decomposing numbers to make multiplication easier.

5. Halve and Double -adjusting factors to make multiplication simpler.

6. Compensation- adjusting a number to create an easier calculation and then correcting the result.

   
   

   The strategies should be taught explicitly and conceptually, including when to use each one, so students build strategic competence rather than simply memorize procedures. Teaching these strategies helps students become more efficient, accurate, and flexible in their mathematical thinking.
   
   

Fluency practice needs to be substantial and intentional so students can build both strategies and automaticity. The goal is not just speed or repetition, but helping students develop flexibility and confidence. One thing I would like to try more intentionally in my 4th grade classroom is incorporating short daily “strategy share” routines. After solving a fluency problem, students could explain the strategy they chose and why it was efficient. We could compare different approaches and discuss when one strategy might be more effective than another. I also think it would be powerful to occasionally present the same numbers in a slightly different format to push students to adapt their thinking rather than rely on a single method. This would help reinforce flexibility and deepen their understanding while still building automaticity.