The Build Math Minds podcast is for my fellow Recovering Traditionalists out there. If you don’t know whether or not you are a Recovering Traditionalist, here’s how I define us. We are math educators who used to teach math the traditional way. Flip lesson by lesson in the textbook, directly teaching step-by-step how to solve math problems. But now, we are working to change that to a style of teaching math that is fun and meets our students where they are at, not just teaching what comes next ...
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Episode 171 - Summer Book Study for Elementary Math Educators
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Por Christina Tondevold
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My kids and I play a lot. Sports, card games, board games, but they all have a preset goal…to win. According to a book I’m reading, true play does NOT have a preset goal. So it got me wondering how much true play my kids, and I, actually do. I’m making it a goal to include more opportunities for us to truly play. In this episode I’m sharing my idea…
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Episode 169 - Math Fluency Through Flexibility
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If you’ve struggled with how to help your elementary students build their math fluency, there is one thing I encourage you to do: Help your students build their flexibility with numbers. Textbooks try to directly teach strategies to students thinking that is how they will build flexibility, but you spend months doing that and then later in the year…
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Episode 168 - Use Math Manipulatives - No Matter The Age
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When I first started teaching I don’t think I ONCE used a math manipulative with my students. It was all about learning and memorizing procedures and I didn’t know they needed to actually understand the math. Now, I’m a Recovering Traditionalist and I know that kids need to understand the math, not just DO it, and to help them understand they need …
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Episode 167 - Mental Math does NOT mean doing it in your head
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Growing up I thought doing Mental Math meant doing the algorithm in my head. Times have changed and now many educators have kids solve math in different ways but during Mental Math it’s still only having kids to do math in their head. That’s not exactly what Mental Math should be about. In this episode we explore what doing Mental Math really shoul…
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Episode 166 - A Child’s Progression When Grouping to Count Items
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If you’ve ever watched a child during a counting collection and thought “Ugh! Why are you grouping the items like that?!?” Well, there’s probably a reason. There is a progression kids go through when organizing items they are counting. Now even though this information comes from a book about Early Childhood Education, it still applies to those of y…
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Episode 165 - Geometry in PreK-2 is more than just knowing names of shapes
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It is commonly thought that Geometry in the early grades is just about getting kids to name and identify shapes. There are actually 4 big ideas talked about in the Navigating Through Geometry book. One of which is the work around two- and three-dimensional shapes but it is so much more than just naming & identifying shapes. In this episode we take …
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Episode 164 - The Power of Using Inverse Operations to Subtract & Divide
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There are 4 main strategies children tend to use to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems. These math strategies are not tricks. Their foundations are built on number relationships and properties of operations. In the Math Strategy Sessions we have already explored 3 of the strategies and our next session is focused on …
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Episode 163 - Helping Your Students to Be a Successful Student
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There are lots of Problems of Teaching when you are helping young kids learn mathematics. One of the hardest ones is helping your students to be successful learners, constantly trying to manage a large classroom of students who often are not very productive. In the book Teaching Problems and the Problems of Teaching by Dr. Magdalene Lampert, there …
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Episode 162 - Approximation, Precision, & Accuracy in Measurement
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In this video I’m sharing a part of a book that made me go “Hmm, I’ve never really thought about that!” It has to do with just how precise we can actually be when measuring items. One of the Standards of Mathematical Practice is “Attend to Precision” which is about being precise in all mathematical vocabulary and content, but just how precise shoul…
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Episode 161 - A candy bar is better than a pie…when it comes to fractions
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I love pies, Pecan Pie especially, but I don’t love them during math time. Pies, well circles in general, are an overused visual when it comes to the teaching of fractions. In this video we take a look at visual fraction models that are much better to use and will be helpful to your students as they progress into other mathematical concepts like pe…
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Episode 160 - Tips for Getting Kids to Talk in Math Class
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After the 2024 Virtual Math Summit, there was so much mention of using Sentence Stems I wanted to dig a bit deeper into them. In my research I stumbled upon an old blog post by one of my favorite Math-y people, Sara Van Der Werf. In this podcast episode I’m sharing a piece of her blog post that talks about one tweak you can make to Think/Pair/Share…
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Cathy Fosnot and Pam Harris are The Queens of Number Strings (or Problem Strings as Pam would call them). I’m way too excited about the fact they are teaming up to do a one-day workshop all about using Problem Strings for Automaticity, Fluency, and Beyond. If you’ve been doing number strings and want to go more in depth on how to use them in your c…
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Episode 158 - Virtual Math Summit Preview: Preventing Teacher Burnout
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Before the 2024 Virtual Math Summit starts next week, enjoy this preview of a Pre-Summit Session by Rosalba Serrano on Preventing Teacher Burnout. Rosalba shares a ton of information and ideas to help you with burnout but I specifically picked this clip because one of the ideas she shared is one that my family uses a lot: Control the Controllables.…
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Episode 157 - Virtual Math Summit Preview: Challenges and Benefits of Building Kids' Thinking
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The 2024 Virtual Math Summit is in two weeks! Here’s a preview of 3 sessions from Jenny Foreman, Loren Thorpe, and myself talking about the challenges and benefits of working on getting your students to think and not just compute during math class. To see the full list of speakers, their presentations, and to get registered go to VirtualMathSummit.…
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Episode 156 - Virtual Math Summit Preview: Things to Think About When Doing Number Routines
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The 2024 Virtual Math Summit is this month! Here’s a preview of 3 sessions from Michaela Epstein, Rosalba Serrano, and Nicole Thompson & Jessica Batinovic giving you tips, ideas, and inspiration to make our Number Routines the best they can be for your students. To see the full list of speakers, their presentations, and to get registered go to Virt…
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Episode 155 - Virtual Math Summit Preview: Teaching Math with Newcomers in Mind
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The 2024 Virtual Math Summit starts in less than 1 month! Check out this preview of Dr. Jim Ewing’s keynote session about Teaching Math with Newcomers in Mind. To see the full list of speakers, their presentations, and to get registered go to VirtualMathSummit.com/register. To get any links mentioned in this episode, go to the show notes page at Bu…
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Episode 154 - Virtual Math Summit Preview: Helping Students Understand Multiplication
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The 2024 Virtual Math Summit is coming soon. This week’s episode gives you a preview of 4 sessions that focus on helping students build their understanding and fluency of multiplication. Check out this preview of Shannon Olson, Juli Dixon, Thuc-Khahn Park, and Brittany Hege’s sessions. To see the full list of speakers, their presentations, and to g…
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Episode 153: Virtual Math Summit Preview: Tips for Creating Student-Centered Classrooms
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The 2024 Virtual Math Summit is just around the corner. This week’s episode gives you a preview of 4 of the sessions. To see the full list of speakers, their presentations, and to get registered go to VirtualMathSummit.com/register. I’m a huge supporter of Student-Centered Classrooms and so for this episode I grabbed some clips to share with you th…
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Episode 152 - Why don't you talk about Time & Money?
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I get asked why I don’t do much training about Time & Measurement. I do have some videos, you can see them in my Playlists at the YouTube channel, but there is a real reason why I don’t talk about those concepts as much as others. So in this video you get my thoughts (based upon what other math educators & researchers have to say) about why we shou…
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Episode 151 - What Do Students Need to Know About Division?
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This essential understanding about division is something even adults struggle with: Division is defined by its inverse relationship with multiplication. Our textbooks want us to teach division as its own separate operation but a key to helping students understand and become proficient in division is to teach it in conjunction with multiplication. I…
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Episode 150 - A Quick Math Story Problem Activity
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Want a quick & easy to implement activity that will show you how much your students know about the math operations and about math story problems? I’ve got it for you in this week’s Build Math Minds podcast. This idea comes from the book Taking Action: Implementing Effective Mathematics Teaching Practices by DeAnn Huinker and Victoria Bill. You can …
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Episode 149 - Things to Say Instead of IDK
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The two ends of the spectrum when teaching math seem to be “here are the exact ways to solve this problem, follow it exactly,” and “you figure it out, I’m not telling you anything.” Neither of these tend to work. Instead it’s about finding a balance between these. We need to give some guidance, but not too much. We want them to figure out ways to s…
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #10 - Join The Flexibility Formula Course
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It's been an incredible journey over the past two weeks as we've explored nine key strategies to Kickstart your students' number sense. Now, as we reach the end of this Kickstart event, it's essential to understand that the foundations you're laying are seeds of number sense, and their growth will be gradual. These principles we've discussed serve …
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #9 - Practice makes Permanent…not Perfect.
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The saying "Practice Makes Perfect" often implies that repetition leads to mastery. However, practicing something you do poorly, or incorrectly, doesn't make it perfect; it instead reinforces bad habits. Practice actually makes PERMANENT. Practice is crucial, but it should follow the establishment of a strong sense of numbers. Day 9’s tip is to fin…
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #8 - Empowering Students Through the Use of Story Problems
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Day 8 of the Number Sense Kickstart emphasizes a simple, yet sometimes difficult, teaching strategy: Let students solve story problems, don’t give them the steps. The concept of Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) plays a pivotal role here. It acknowledges that students bring their innate mathematical knowledge shaped by everyday experiences with …
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #7 - Using Number Routines to Put Theoretical Ideas Into Practice
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In Day 7 of our Number Sense Kickstart we are shifting from the theoretical ideas I’ve shared so far into practical classroom strategies that make it easier to do the theoretical ideas. Our first practical idea is to do a Number Routine with your students. These structured, brief activities, taking just 5-10 minutes, are a potent tool for meaningfu…
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #6 - The Biggest Mistake Educators Make When Using the C-R-A Model
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Today we're diving into the Concrete-Representational-Abstract (C-R-A) model of teaching mathematics. Typically, these stages are presented in isolation, with separate lessons for each. However, the real impact comes when all three are combined in a single lesson. This integration helps students see connections between different problem-solving met…
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #5 - Are the Math Visuals You're Using Actually Helpful?
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It’s Day 5 of the Number Sense Kickstart and we're focusing on the power of visuals in elementary math education. Just like in reading, where creating mental images enhances comprehension, visuals are essential in math to deepen students' understanding of numbers and mathematical operations. However, sometimes the visuals that are in math textbooks…
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #4 - Listening to Student Thinking
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This is Day 4 of the Number Sense Kickstart and we are exploring the profound impact of active listening in the classroom. Did you know that in the typical classroom, teachers do 89% of the talking, while students ask only 11 questions a day, primarily procedural ones? It's time to change this narrative and shift the balance toward student engageme…
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #3 - Having a record of what your students understand
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Most textbooks are focused on answer-getting so their assessments are also focused on just answer-getting. That doesn’t tell you anything about what your students understand, only what they can do. To ensure you are building your students’ understanding of numbers, you need some way to keep track of what they are understanding. It’s Day 3 of the Nu…
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Number Sense Kickstart Day #2 - What understanding do your students need?
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Mathematics is so much more than just getting the answers. Answers are important, but that really doesn’t tell you what your students UNDERSTAND about math, it only tells you what they can DO. If you want to see what your students understand there are 8 number sense concepts that are the root of understanding numbers. It’s Day 2 of our Number Sense…
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Do you have students struggling with their number sense and fluency in elementary mathematics? You aren’t the only one! Over the last few years we’ve seen gaps in students’ understanding get bigger and bigger. So many elementary students are not fluent with math and the underlying issue is their lack of number sense. Textbooks often jump straight i…
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Episode 148 - Why Is Understanding Fractions So Hard?
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Here in the United States, it is the end of the school year and teachers are contemplating what work they should send home with students for them to do over the summer. In today's podcast, I get into why I'm not a big fan of general problem packets over the summer and how the phrase "practice makes perfect" is a little inaccurate.…
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Episode 146 - Standard Algorithms Compared to Computational Strategies
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I've been on a kick about math fluency lately and how a lot of textbooks have their teaching of fluency wrong. Growing up, fluency to me meant being good at the algorithm. Being able to follow the steps that the teacher laid out for students was the sign of being fluent. But, as textbooks have started teaching new strategies, students and parents a…
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Episode 145 - Math Textbooks Have the Teaching of Fluency All Wrong
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In the last episode of the podcast, I shared the three ideas that make up computational fluency. Flexibility is often the piece that is missing in our fluency instruction, but recently textbooks have tried to incorporate more of it, but in the wrong way. In this week’s podcast, I go over some of the shortcomings in the ways textbook’s teach fluency…
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Episode 144 - What is Computational Fluency?
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The Flexibility Formula courses that I offer have a huge focus on how we can help kids develop number sense, but the main reason to focus on number sense is really to help your students become flexible thinkers; to build their flexibility in mathematics. In episode 144, I talk about how my courses started and the research that inspired them. Come t…
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Episode 143 - Summer Reading List for Elementary Math Teachers 2022
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Each of you listening to this podcast have different goals for your professional development. You have different things you are wanting to read about to help your students next year have an even better math experience in your classroom. So I’ve compiled a bunch of different lists on Amazon so you can choose from books for specific areas you want to…
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Have you ever felt like the thing you’re going through will never end? There is no doubt that hard times can wear us out and make us feel helpless. Then, it can seem like the good times don't last long enough. Whether it's good or bad times, it's important to remember that nothing lasts forever. In this week’s episode, we are talking about how to t…
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Episode 141 - Get The Most Out of Math Games
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Games are one of my favorite ways to have kids practice. They can do 50 problems in 5 minutes and not even realize it. But, one of the biggest complaints I hear about using games in the classroom is that teachers don’t know what the kids are actually doing while playing the game. Are they doing the math or just goofing around?? Come listen to episo…
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As many of you are currently in the thick of standardized testing, it reminds you that testing shouldn’t be like this….but if not this, then what? This week, while sitting in my car waiting for one of the hundred, or so, practices my kids had to finish, I opened up the recent issue of the NCTM journal Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12.…
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Episode 139 - Should We Stop Giving Tests in Math?
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Should we stop giving tests in math class? This question was recently tweeted by Chris Luzniak and I found the comments under it very thought provoking. So, I thought I'd share some of them with you in today's podcast. Tell me what you think about them in the comments over at buildmathminds/139.
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Testing season is upon us and as always, it is stressful. I wish there were easy tips or tricks I could give you to help make it awesome but unfortunately, that doesn’t exist. In episode 138, I give some simple reminders on what to focus on as your student’s go through testing. But the biggest reminder is that your work of helping these kids be mat…
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Episode 137 - Math in Children's Literature
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This week I finally got a chance to crack open the book Mathematizing Children’s Literature: Sparking Connections, Joy, and Wonder Through Read-Alouds and Discussion by Allison Hintz and Anthony T. Smith. I haven’t even read the whole thing yet because a paragraph from the first page struck me so deeply that I knew I had to share it with you all. I…
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Have you ever dove right into something you had no idea how to do? As hard as we try not to, we often ask our students to do just that. When I first started my Recovering Traditionalist journey and implementing more student focused experiences, I thought it would be great but there were definitely some growing pains. In today’s podcast, I’m talking…
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In today’s podcast, I’m sharing an article that presents a visual image I once saw that plays a huge role in how I think about building our understandings of mathematics. I really think about it all the time so I thought it was time to share it with you. That image is the tip of the iceberg. Come take a listen as I get into how the visual represent…
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Pencil or pen? So many educators are adamant that kids MUST use pencils in math class so they can erase their errors. In today’s episode I’m wondering if pens could actually be better. Perhaps there is value in keeping mistakes on the page as our student’s work to get to answers.
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Episode 133 - Experiences and Equity & Access
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In today's episode, I'm wrapping up my series on the Flexibility Formula by looking at Virtual Math Summit sessions from Juliana Matherson, Dr. Hilary Kreisberg, Neily Boyd and Dionne Aminata that address the Experiencing and Equity & Access pillars. These session sneak peeks give us some great tools for serving our students with noteworthy classro…
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Episode 132 - The Connecting Pillar with Stacey Ellis, Matt Halpern, & Dawn Dibley
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I’ve been doing a series of episodes sharing some summit sessions that address each of The Flexibility Formula. Episode 130 we took a look at Understanding, episode 131 we dove into Observing, and today’s episode we are going to look at the Connecting pillar with Virtual Math Summit presenters Stacey Ellis, Matt Halpern, and Dawn Dibley. Each of th…
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