Abacus-based mental calculation (AMC) is a widely used educational tool for enhancing math learning, offering an accessible and cost-effective method for classroom implementation. Despite its universal appeal, the neurocognitive mechanisms that drive the efficacy of AMC training remain poorly understood. Notably, although abacus training relies…

This longitudinal study was conducted in order to determine and improve the mental addition strategies of students in their 2nd and 3rd years at elementary school. The first part of the study used the qualitative research method of case study, while the second part adopted the single group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design. The study…

This research aimed to examine whether the activities related to mental computation strategies had any effect on the development of the second-grade elementary school students' problem-solving (PS) skills. Participants of the study are comprised of 14 children aged 7-8 years and enrolled in the second grade of the elementary school of a village.…

Many countries include mental calculation within their curriculum, as the literature shows benefits related to it. However, evidence mainly focuses on the effects of teaching mental calculation on computational fluency. Therefore, the authors aimed to assess the effects of teaching mental calculation on double-digit computation, number line…

Our research focuses on developing elementary students' mental computation skills with the help of card games. Choosing this area of study was motivated by our personal experiences, namely, that mathematics programmes of study do not lay emphasis on this aspect; there are too few hours dedicated to developing this skill, and several mental…

This study, a sub-study of a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research project, applies a modified strategy of the U[superscript 2]MC for an eight-week afterschool robotics curriculum to promote upper elementary students' computational thinking in the second grade. Twenty-one students in second grade participated in a Life on Mars project…

Numerical estimation has been used to study how children mentally represent numbers for many years (e.g., Siegler & Opfer, 2003). However, these studies have always presented children with positive numbers and positive number lines. Children's mental representation of negative numbers has never been addressed. The present study tested children…

It is often assumed when students fidget they are not on task. Two within-subject studies challenge this assumption by testing the effect of allowing fidgeting on three types of thinking: speeded mental math (Study 1), brainstorming and memory (Study 2). Study 1 showed that student's performance on speeded math was no different when performed in a…

The authors compared the mental computation performance and mental strategies used by an experimental Grade 2 class and a control Grade 2 class before and after instructional intervention. Results indicate that students in the experimental group had better performance on mental computation. The use of mental strategies (counting, separation,…

Soroban abacus training is called as mental arithmetic training in our country. It is known for mental arithmetic to increase the ability of four mode operations. Besides this, how is the situation for the students which are having Soroban abacus training in the terms of problem solving abilities, creativity, development of concepts, attraction…

Marlene Chesney describes a piece of research where the participants were asked to complete a calculation, 16 + 8, and then asked to describe how they solved it. The diversity of invented strategies will be of interest to teachers along with the recommendations that are made. So "how do 'you' solve 16 + 8?"

The aim of this study was to investigate the specific numerical and calculation abilities of 28 children with ADHD without comorbid mathematical learning disabilities (LD), ranging from the 1st to the 5th grade of primary school, and to examine the stability or the development of the arithmetic profile. Our results showed that a high percentage of…

"Number Talks" is: (1) A five- to fifteen-minute classroom conversation around purposefully crafted computation problems that are solved mentally; and (2) The best part of a teacher's day. Whether you want to implement number talks but are unsure of how to begin or have experience but want more guidance in crafting purposeful problems, this…

This paper reports on a study to examine mental computation strategies used by Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 students to solve addition and subtraction problems. The participants in this study were twenty five 7 to 9 year-old students identified as excellent, good and satisfactory in their mathematics performance from a school in Penang, Malaysia.…

The adaptive use of approximate calculation was examined using a verification task with 18 third graders with mathematics learning disabilities, 22 typically achieving third graders, and 21 typically achieving second graders. Participants were asked to make true-false decisions on simple and complex addition problems while the distance between the…