This is what my student, Alysa, told me on Monday, December 3rd. She has been struggling with fractions, and so I would give her several practice exercises, and show her some new ways to do them. I had her convert mix numbers to improper fractions and vice versa. I had Alysa add, subtract, multiply and divide a variety of fractions. Just when she seems to understand them a bit, I had her cross divide. At first she was a bit confused and resistant because her teacher was not teaching her to cross divide/cancel. As she began realizing how much easier it makes arriving at the final answer, she began to gravitate towards this method. Now her teacher is teaching this method in class, and she is so excited. Not only did she understand and pass her quiz, she was able to assist her best friend. She came to the tutoring session beaming with pride. I am so proud of her. Now we are on to decimals and percentage. So far so good :).