All of these experiences help students become more comfortable with writing and discussing mathematics. MathWings provides many standard and consumable materials for developing concepts and solving mathematical problems. Students have daily access to these materials and are encouraged to make decisions about when to use them. Cooperative Learning enables students to gather strength from each other as they actively explore mathematical concepts, practice and reinforce skills, and develop their mathematical thinking. MathWings lessons are written in a framework of cooperative learning and the routines are structured around this strategy.
Training supports teachers and their use of cooperative learning.
Both informal and formal means are used to assess students' understanding of skills and concepts. Preassessments, performance tasks, observations, concept checks, journal writing, problem solving, and interviews are all tools used to make instructional decisions and to assess each student's mathematical growth. In MathWings , calculators are presented to the students starting in first grade as one of the many tools that can help them mathematically. Calculators are used as a manipulative aid to develop a concept, as an estimation tool to help in problem solving, as well as a number-crunching tool. Once concepts have been developed, students work on practicing the skills that are needed to compute with ease and accuracy.