Explaining Your Strategy with Words, Drawings, and Number Sentences

This is not just for paper. Teachers, builders, and doctors all explain the same fact in several ways depending on who is listening. This is worth learning because understanding an idea means you can show it more than one way.

Watch for it today, and when you spot it, tell someone what you noticed and how you knew. Ask yourself where else the same idea might be hiding, then go and look.

Today you get to learn something useful. Show your thinking three ways. Words: I added two tens to four tens and left the ones alone. Drawing: four sticks plus two sticks and three dots untouched.

Number sentence: 43 plus 20 equals 63. All three describe the same work. When you can move between words, pictures, and symbols, you understand the idea itself rather than one way of writing it down.

Here is a good test. Explain one problem to someone who was not watching. If they can follow you and get the same answer, your explanation is clear. If they get lost, find the step you skipped and put it back in. Go slowly the first time and faster the fifth time.