Helpful explanations

This week's Carnival of Education is up and running at Scheiss Weekly. There are some fantastic posts there, including one in particular by Sarah Robbins of Parenting the Gifted.

I really like one of Sarah's classtime ideas to help students understand a concept, and I'm going to parrot it here:

After the kids have learned the concept, you can find fun and exciting ways to become experts on it. Take your two digit addition example. When I taught second grade, we did some fun activities to reinforce this concept. You can write stories to explain the process (the ones family lived in an apartment until they got too big, so they all had to move to the tens house).

I LOVE this idea! I have my own cutesy little explanations for ways to remember regrouping and other math concepts, but having the kids write their own helps stretch their imagination, their writing ability, AND their overall understanding of the concept. Maybe they can't remember (or don't like) MY way of explaining it, but if they can think of and then use their own method, it is SURE to stick!

This is one (hopefully of many) idea that I will be using next year in class.