This study investigated the promotion of children's understanding and acquisition of arithmetic concepts and the effects of inhibitory skills. Children in Grades 3, 4, and 5 solved two sets of three-term addition and subtraction problems (e.g., 3 + 24 - 24, 3 + 24 - 22) and completed an inhibition task. Half of the participants received a…

An undergraduate seminar was designed to help preservice teachers focus on students' learning. Preservice teachers planned and conducted weekly tutoring sessions with fourth graders and discussed their experiences in weekly discussions. The author investigated what preservice teachers learned about teaching mathematics from their focus on…

A large body of research has shown that for novice learners, instruction that relies more heavily on worked examples than on problem solving, is more effective for learning as shown by higher test performance. Moreover, this beneficial effect is often obtained with less acquisition time and lower cognitive load during acquisition and test phase.…

Interspersing easy problems among challenging problems has been shown to both increase students' preference for completing math worksheets and the fluency with which they complete challenging problems. Although early research examining the interspersal procedure in mathematics was conducted with college-age students, there are a growing number of…

"Math is language, too," Phyllis and David Whitin (2000) remind everyone in their informative book about reading and writing in the mathematics classroom. This means that students in elementary school math classes are learning two distinct, yet related languages--one of numbers, the other of words. These languages of numbers and words…

Age-related changes in children's performance on simple division problems (e.g., 6 divided by 2, 72 divided by 9) were investigated by asking children in Grades 4 through 7 to solve 32 simple division problems. Differences in performance were found across grade, with younger children performing more slowly and less accurately than older children.…

Examines whether verbal problem-solving skills in a group of fourth graders would improve if they were specifically taught how to generate their own diagrams when solving word problems. Classifies textbook word problems into three general types and describes them: (1) tabular; (2) geometric; and (3) contingency diagraming. (YP)

The mathematics standards contained in this document represent a continuation of the Kansas State Board of Education efforts to set high performance expectation levels for the learning of all Kansas students. The guide lists 15 mathematics curriculum outcomes: number sense, number properties, number systems, number operations, patterns, functions,…

The effect of special instruction in certain reading skills involved in solving verbal problems was compared with the effect of supervised practice in solving verbal problems on the improvement of verbal problem-solving ability of 179 fourth graders. The sample from six classes in three public elementary schools in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, was…

Outlines the development of a lesson structured around four stages of problem-solving. Provides five problems and questions for understanding, getting started, and for extension in each of the problems. (YP)

This is one of a series of 20 booklets designed for participants in an in-service course for teachers of elementary mathematics. The course, developed by the University of Illinois Arithmetic Project, is designed to be conducted by local school personnel. In addition to these booklets, a course package includes films showing mathematics being…

This is one of a series of 20 booklets designed for participants in an in-service course for teachers of elementary mathematics. The course, developed by the University of Illinois Arithmetic Project, is designed to be conducted by local school personnel. In addition to these booklets, a course package includes films showing mathematics being…

This is one of a series of 20 booklets designed for participants in an in-service course for teachers of elementary mathematics. The course, developed by the University of Illinois Arithmetic Project, is designed to be conducted by local school personnel. In addition to these booklets, a course package includes films showing mathematics being…

The Mathematics Evaluation Materials Package (MEMP) is a set of objectives and companion test items for mathematics education in Grades 4 to 6. Developed for classroom use in a setting that emphasizes increased teacher and principal decision-making and flexible curricular guidelines, it distinguishes itself from other evaluation devices in the…

Studied schemes involved in solving two-step arithmetic word problems in (n=1824) elementary schoolchildren in Israel. Compound schemes and combinations of operations were found to affect the difficulty level of the problems. Appendix includes two versions of the test instrument. (Contains 17 references.) (MKR)