Young children’s earliest experiences with mathematics come through solving problems. Different strategies are necessary as students experience a wider variety of problems. Students must become aware of these strategies as the need for them arises, and as they are modeled during classroom activities, the teacher should encourage students to take note of them. For example, after a student has shared a solution and how it was obtained, the teacher may identify the strategy by saying, “It sounds like you made an organized list to find the solution. Did anyone solve the problem a different way?” This verbalization helps develop common language and representations and helps other students understand what the first student was doing. Such discussion also suggests that no strategy is learned once and for all; strategies are learned
over time, are applied in particular contexts, and become more refined, elaborate, and flexible as they are used in increasingly complex problem situations