What's The Math Strategy?

What’s The Strategy?

We hope you enjoy this video that was created to be shared with your class.  The video is 4 minutes long. However, it is intended to create a 10-15 minute discussion with your class (including video time). If you watch the video first, it will give you an idea of the best discussion points for your students.  

Suggestions for Pausing:

You might want to pause at the very beginning, 0:14 seconds, to allow your students to use mental math to solve the question.  Or, perhaps your students are not ready for mental math at this level. If that is the case they could be allowed manipulatives or whiteboards to solve.  When students are allowed to take time to solve the problem they will engage more with the rest of the video as they too will have entered into the problem.

From :23 seconds to :42 seconds, Eamon shares how he solves the problem.  You might want to replay this section a few times to allow students to figure out how he is solving the problem.  

From :43 to :48 seconds students are prompted to consider how he solved the problem.  At this point, students could turn and talk to describe what they think Eamon did to solve the problem.   After they decide how he solved it, ask a student to share their idea of how it was solved.  

Watch another student explain Eamon’s thinking on the video from :50 - 1:23.  Was your students’ explanation similar to Myla’s?  

The next section of the video describes ways to represent Eamon’s thinking.  Depending on your students’ understanding of the strategy, you may decide to focus on one representation more than another.  

1:27 - 2:25 seconds - Eamon’s thinking is represented with ten frames.

2:25 - 3:15 seconds - Eamon’s thinking is represented on a number line.

3:16 - 3:28 seconds - Eamon’s thinking is represented in numeric form, but in a friendly manner that is accessible to more students. 

3:28 - 3:47 seconds - Eamon’s thinking is represented in accurate numeric representation.  

Eamon’s strategy is then named at 3:50 seconds.

In the end, students are asked if they could use one of Eamon’s strategies.  

Here is a link to cards that summarize the strategies, if you’d like to use them to support a discussion of the strategies in your class: Addition/Subtraction Strategy Cards 

If you have a video of a student solving a strategy that you think could be made into a ‘What is the Strategy?’ video, please share it with the coach connected to your school.  

Questions You Might Ask Students:

1. Did you visualize his strategy in a different way?
2. Is there another way to solve this question?
3. Do you think there is a more efficient strategy? Why?
4. With what numbers would you want to use Eamon’s strategy? What numbers wouldn’t you want to use Eamon’s strategy with?

Key Thinking To Support Student Thinking:

In this example, Eamon is using place value to solve the problem.  When Eamon thinks along place value lines, it allows him to solve double-digit numbers in a simplified manner.  Solving along place value lines is the precursor to making sense of the standard algorithm. If your students are ready, perhaps they can be asked to make the connection between the splitting strategy and an alternative algorithm:

With adding, we can break apart numbers and reorganize numbers in ways that make adding easier.  When students demonstrate various ways to decompose a number or reorganize numbers it is important to draw students’ attention to this.  This will support students to become flexible with numbers. They will realize they can move numbers around in a way that works to make it easier for them.  

When students see different representations of any operation, it is useful to help students make the connection between the different representations.  It is the idea of concrete fading, we represent thinking concretely then support students to transition to a numeric representation. This will allow students to have a visual mental representation to connect to the numbers.   It will strengthen their understanding of what is happening and allow them to move towards only representing operations numerically. When understanding a new strategy, it helps students to make sense of it concretely first.  

Strategies From The Continuum: 

Getting to a Decade Number

Splitting