Attempts to describe a notion parallel to number sense, called symbol sense, incorporating the following components: making friends with symbols, reading through symbols, engineering symbolic expressions, equivalent expressions for non-equivalent meanings, choice of symbols, flexible manipulation skills, symbols in retrospect, and symbols in…

The concept of variable is central to mathematics teaching and learning in junior and senior high schools. Described is a structured reflexive exercise designed to reexamine the notion of variable and to rediscover its richness and multiplicity of meaning. (PK)