Congratulations, you internalized the micro steps by repetition and critical analysis. Not everyone gets there on their own for a million different reasons. I d

Congratulations, you internalized the micro steps by repetition and critical analysis. Not everyone gets there on their own for a million different reasons. I do not think there should be a 'focus' per se on 'micro steps' but there does need to be encouragement to kids to think about this and find solutions on their own. Case in point, I was made a very proud dad today. My first-grade daughter and I were going over her math homework, which was flash cards with addition equations on them. This week the focus in her class is the numbers 4 and 5, so on each flash card, at least one of the terms was 4 or 5. I was drilling her on them, and every time there was an equation the sum of which was >10, she'd mutter under her breath something about subtraction that I couldn't quite discern. I finally stopped at the "5+7" flash card, and asked her to walk me through her process for solving that particular problem. Her response: "Well, I know 7 is minus three [from ten], so I do minus 3 from 5 which is 2, then I put a 1 in front of that, and that's 12." In other words, she's doing | (10 - 7) - 5 | + 10. Or, basically, 7+3 = 10, 5-3 = 2, 10+2 = 12. I asked her, "Emma, is that how they teach you to add at school?" "No," she said, "I just think about it like that." Is that the absolute easiest way to solve that problem? Well, maybe; I don't know. I'm like 99% sure, however, I do that exact same process when I do mental calculations. That doesn't matter though. What matters is that she's analyzing problems, identifying and generalizing patterns, then applying those patterns to NEW problems. She is numerically literate! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numeracy) This is especially gratifying for me, since we spend a few hours at home every week going over more advanced math topics like fractions and multiplication. She doesn't quite grok it yet, but at least when she sees it in school it won't be a total surprise. In the end, she figured out a system to solve problems on her own that works 100% of the time. Critical thinking skills are paramount. Learn those and everything else comes eventually.