The aim of this study was to examine the concept development of decimal numbers in 244 Chinese elementary students in grades 4-6. Three grades of students differed in their intuitive sense of decimals and conceptual understanding of decimals, with more strategic approaches used by older students. Misconceptions regarding the density nature of…

Examines 250 sixth-grade students' understanding of arithmetic average by assessing their understanding of the computational algorithm. Results indicate that the majority of the students knew the "add-them-all-up-and-divide" averaging algorithm, but only half of the students were able to correctly apply the algorithm to solve a…

Children may perform computational operations readily when dealing with physical materials, but may have difficulty dealing with representational stimuli (pictures of objects) or symbolic stimuli. Describes and illustrates the function of mediators in moving from physical to representational or symbolic stimuli. (PR)

The differences between drill activities and practice activities and the reasons why there are differences are discussed. Two games that uses playing cards to provide students with untimed opportunities to practice their facts are described. (KR)

Discusses three methods to teach the order of operations to middle school students: (1) asking students to fill in operations in a statement to obtain a given answer; (2) using mnemonics to remember operation order; and (3) having students discover the logic system used by their calculators. (MDH)