When students use uneconomical strategies, such as counting all, and no attempt is made to move them forward quickly and appropriately, they become inefficient and inflexible counters and users of number.

The overarching theme of this course is making connections. Making connections between:

• counting
• magnitude and comparing amounts
• visual strategies
• structures and patterns in numbers
• flexible manipulation of numbers

Although we deal with each of these ideas separately in this course, we also urge you on the way through to stop and consider the role and relationships between each of them. In the classroom we need to be vigilant to ensure that students are making the connections needed for a deep understanding of numbers and how they work.