Strategy games can provide an interesting context for students to solve problems in an elementary mathematics classroom. The games are easy to learn, but finding a winning strategy exercises students to develop different methods to win the game.

Students should be encouraged to focus on a big mathematical idea and to look for connections between problems and solution strategies. This unified view suggests that the students are developing computational fluency with fractions.

A new textbook was considered which included engaging, carefully sequenced problems to help students develop skill and understanding of division. The teacher's manual encouraged Boerst to provide opportunities for the students to share multiple methods for division in order to reinforce the idea that many ways exist to solve mathematical problems.

Mathematical reasoning is the cornerstone of mathematics learning and should be the focus of mathematics teaching. Two mathematical problems are presented, which describe students' responses, and highlight how students demonstrated mathematical reasoning in the midst of working on these problems.

Phyllis Whitin was interested in the role of communications in developing mathematical understanding among children. She designed a problem-posing explorations system, which encouraged children to think, question, solve problems and discuss their ideas, strategies and solutions.

Teachers face many challenges when attempting to teach problem solving to young children. This article examines these challenges from a classroom teacher's perspective and suggests ways to facilitate reform in mathematics instruction.