I begin teaching the Investigations portion of math Tuesday and I’m really, really worried.  Here’s the reason why.  Investigations is a brand-new curriculum to our school and a requirement for all schools in the district.   The teacher’s manual is difficult to follow and strays from the standard algorithms that I was taught in school.  It focuses on different ways of thinking and encourage students to think in different ways.  Here’s the problem.  It doesn’t tell you any of the strategies that the students should be coming up with.  So if all they can do is repeated addition and the standard algorithm to figure out a problem, there’s not much I can do.  My cooperating teacher is stuck.  Our other 5th grade teachers are stuck.  Our math instructional coach is stuck.  I even asked my college professor this morning at class and he can’t even explain it.  How the heck can I teach it if nobody can figure it out?????????  Anyone have any ideas?????