I had a conversation with a teacher at my LINK2PRACTICE school about teaching for understanding instead of memorizing, or in other words, conceptual teaching instead of procedural. The teacher was happy to have this conversation because he focusses much of his teaching on understanding concepts over memorizing steps. The teacher does this through a couple different techniques he has developed over the years including, explaining to his students the “why?” behind mathematical procedures instead of just showing the steps. He also encourages his students to solve problems in different ways which helps them to understand a problem more deeply, leading to more retention. For example, if a student is asked to multiply binomials, he has three different ways they can do that: algebra tiles, drawing shapes similar to algebra tiles and using the FOIL method. He also explained that the three options works well for assessment because if a student can’t complete all three solutions they usually can figure out one, so they can still solve the problem. This conversation led me to investigate Algebra Tiles and other manipulatives.