I Can’t Choose My Favorite Strategy
This week we were preparing for our second trimester student-led conferences. Students are preparing for the amazing responsibility of sharing with their caregivers what they are working on, celebrating, and being challenged by thus far in their educational journey as a first or second-year student. Students were asked to do a number of things to prepare such as choose a passage from our novel study to read to their parents, create a self-evaluation for the IB Learner Attributes, and share a piece of writing that they felt proud of.
In particular, our first-year students were asked to think about the strategies they’ve come up with to solve both addition and subtraction problems both in and out of context. They were asked to think carefully about all the ways they solve problems and identify a way they are thinking about mathematics that is particularly meaningful to them and then share this with their caregivers during these student-led conferences.
I was talking with the class about their work, and I asked them to think about their favorite (my words) strategy for solving addition and subtraction problems. The following conversation ensued:
Student A: Mr. Zak, I can’t choose my favorite strategy.
Teacher: Okay. Why not?
Student A: It depends on what kind of math problem for what kind of strategy I use.
Student B: Me too! It’s about whether it’s adding or subtracting.
Student A: No, it’s not about addition or subtraction. It’s about what the numbers are.
Teacher: What does everyone think about that?
Student C: Yeah. The numbers sometimes tell me what to do when working on a problem.
This conversation knocked me on my ass. I’ve always believed that the numbers in a problem can be a pivotal determining factor as to what strategy we use when determining a solution. But, I had not explicitly had this conversation with my students.
Somehow, 112 days in, we hadn’t talked about this. In hindsight, maybe we should have. But, to my surprise, this 6-year-old—through our 112 days together—had come to this conclusion on his own. And for me, that was everything. It reminded me that the long game is what we do. We work with these kiddos over time and help them develop a sense of number that outlasts any one day, one statement, or one strategy.