In the lower grades, teachers can help children express, categorize, and compare their strategies. Opportunities to use strategies must be embedded naturally in the curriculum across the content areas. By the time students reach the middle grades, they should be skilled at recognizing when various strategies are appropriate to use and should be capable of deciding when and how to use them. By high school, students should have access to a wide range of strategies, be able to decide which one to use, and be able to adapt and invent strategies. 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. This verbalization helps develop common language and representations and helps other students understand what the first student was doing. Monitor and reflect on the process of mathematical problem solving Effective problem solvers constantly monitor and adjust what they are doing. They make sure they understand the problem. Effective problem solvers plan frequently.