“When children are given the chance to compute in their own ways, to play with relationships and operations, they see themselves as mathematicians and their understanding deepens.  Such playing with numbers forms the basis for algebra and will take children a long way in being able to compute not only efficiently but elegantly!” Fosnot & Dolk, Young Mathematicians at Work: Constructing Number Sense, Addition, and Subtraction, pg. 151

This course offers robust mathematics to support teachers in development of computational fluency, flexibility and efficiency. Participants will develop and/or deepen their understanding of: 

• concepts and properties of the real number system (e.g. factorization, multiplicative and additive identities, additive and multiplicative inverses, commutative, associative, and distributive properties, etc.)multiple models for rational numbers and algorithms for computing with rational numbers;

• proportional reasoning to solve a variety of problems; 

• mathematically convincing arguments that include geometric and algebraic representations;

• strategies for computing mentally;

• investigation as an integral part of mathematical proficiency; 

• learning mathematics through problem solving.