ALT Some students easily solve computation problems that their grade level peers find difficult. They may come to an answer quickly and say they just knew the answer. The teachers often wonder how to challenge and engage these students. But students who excel in computation also have a range of strengths and needs. Some students considered good at math have a restricted view of what mathematics is and what it means to engage with mathematical ideas. Others do not think of themselves as competent math thinkers, even though their teachers see that they excel at many classroom tasks. students who find correct answers easily may never have been challenged to think about the characteristics and properties of the operations that underlie the strategies they used to get their answers. When offered this challenge, they may be eager to engage in these new kinds of questions, or they may become frustrated by unfamiliar questions and be unprepared to use errors as a source of learning.
