Addressed are four key issues regarding concrete instruction: What is concrete? What is a worthwhile concrete experience? How can concrete experiences be used effectively in early childhood mathematics instruction? Is there evidence such experiences work? I argue that concrete experiences are those that build on what is familiar to a child and can…

How best to promote fluency with basic sums and differences is still not entirely clear. Some advocate a direct approach--using drill to foster memorization of basic facts by rote. Others recommend an indirect approach that first involves learning reasoning strategies. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the efficacy of 2…

This evaluation study with 94 elementary students (50 with mild mental handicap) compared computer-assisted instruction (CAI) and paper-and-pencil practices in promoting automatization of basic addition and subtraction skills. Findings suggested CAI was more effective but that the students with mental handicap required more practice than…

Most studies on feedback compare elaborated feedback types presenting knowledge on the correct response (KCR) immediately together with further information to simple feedback types providing knowledge of result (KR) or KCR. This study uses bug-related tutoring feedback (BRT-feedback) offering strategic information for error correction, but no…

This study was conducted to determine whether the traditional classroom approach to instruction involving the addition and subtraction of number facts (digits 0-6) is more or less effective than the traditional classroom approach plus a commercially-prepared computer game. A pretest-posttest control group design was used with two groups of first…