Using Strategic, Efficient Methods

Using Efficient & Strategic Methods: What is it?

 The goal for flexible math thinkers is to be able to use a variety of efficient strategies based on the numbers presented in the problem.

Supporting Students to use Efficient & Strategic Methods 

Student-developed strategies are not necessarily efficient and effective. Educators will need to support students to work through the exploration of the most effective strategies.

For example, a student-generated strategy may require more steps and time than is appropriate. However, students develop and use these strategies because they make sense to them. As students share and compare their strategies, they will become better at finding methods that are both efficient and effective.

An efficient method is one that does not require a page of calculations and more than a reasonable amount of time to produce an answer. An effective method is one that works for all problems of a particular type (i.e., one that is generalizable to many problems using the same operation). Students need to learn to evaluate their own strategies and algorithms on the basis of the following criteria.

Is the strategy:

• easy to understand?

• easy to apply?

• easy to remember?

• easy to perform accurately?

Continue practicing previous games and encourage students to work with the numbers using the most efficient strategy. Educators can also engage in conversations with students to discuss the most efficient strategies to solve given problems, based on the numbers in the question.