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UPDATED: JUNE 30, 2023: Newsletters
Using Alternate/Invented Methods:
Any strategy other than the traditional algorithm and that does not involve the use of manipulatives or counting by ones as an invented strategy. These invented strategies demonstrate flexibility with numbers and are often done mentally.
Benefits of Invented Strategies
Base-ten concepts are enhanced. There is a definite interaction between the development of base-ten concepts and the process of inventing computational strategies (Carpenter et al., 1998).
Students make fewer errors. Research has found that when students use their own strategies for computation they tend to make fewer errors because they understand their own methods (e.g., see Kamii and Dominick, 1997).
Less reteaching is required. Students rarely use an invented strategy they do not understand. The supporting ideas are firmly networked with a sense of number, thus making the strategies more permanent.
Invented strategies provide the basis for mental computation and estimation. As students become more and more proficient with these flexible methods using pencil and paper support, they soon are able to use them mentally or adapt them to estimation methods.
Flexible, invented strategies are often faster than the traditional algorithms.
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