A coherent understanding of operations is a critical element of preparing students for success in mathematics in middle and high school. edWeb community, Implementing Common Core Standards in Math, held its final webinar of this series in May. Webinar presenter, Dr. Sara Delano Moore, Ph. D., Director of Mathematics and Science at ETA hand2mind, shared connections between the operations understanding students build in elementary school and the mathematics to be learned in middle school and secondary school.
Rigor is driven by a balance among conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, and application. After focusing on conceptual understanding of the operations, teachers must help students use their conceptual understanding to build procedural fluency, both with basic facts and a variety of algorithms.