Rearranging the Question

Idea: Think of the problem the opposite way to understand what it is asking.

Reflection 1: The way I initially looked at this problem 123 + _____ = 300 was to take 123 away from 300 in order to find the difference. This would be the blank area. Although this is a quick and simply way to find the missing value, it is not what the question asked. 123 + how many more = gets us up to 300. This would be a long and tedious method of solving this problem, we had to add more until we reached the desired number. 300. This was frustrating because the ______ served as an unknown. The value after the = should always be the unknown, therefore I rearranged the question so I could feel comfortable trying to find the end value instead of the middle.

Reflection 2: I am more comfortable in knowing where I am going instead of how I'm going to get there. Maybe I should reconsider.