Examining how students reconstruct stories they've heard can give insights into why students often have difficulty understanding and retaining mathematics. Behavioral psychologists refer to the phenomenon of piecing together a series of events as "chaining." This paper argues that the cognitive capacity to reconstruct a whole contextual structure from a few entities within it belongs to even the slowest learners, and that this capacity to retain contextually related information can be activated to facilitate learning and retention of mathematics. The document presents an example of converting a fraction into a decimal in which traditional algorithms are learned through a contextual approach, leading to gains in efficiency and meaning in the acquisition of the skill. Teachers are asked to consistently present an internal contextual view of mathematics to learners. (MDH)