This article illustrates how teachers can use number lines to support students with or at risk for learning disabilities (LD) in mathematics. Number lines can be strategically used to help students understand relations among numbers, approach number combinations (i.e., basic facts), as well as represent and solve addition and subtraction problems.…

This paper makes a proposal, from the perspective of a research mathematician interested in mathematics education, for broadening and deepening whole number arithmetic instruction, to make it more relevant for the twenty-first century, in particular, to enable students to deal with large numbers, arguably an essential skill for modern citizenship.…

This paper dealt with the design of learning tools, that was the development of learning implementation plan or Rencana Pelaksanaan Pembelajaran (RPP) based on Fun and Easy Math (FEM) approach in the form of a number line model. FEM was an approach in order to teach mathematics effectively to students in a fun and easy way according to the…

This article reflects critically on the guidance offered to South African teachers in two canonical texts: the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) and Mathematics teaching and learning framework for South Africa: Teaching mathematics for understanding (TMU). I make explicit my philosophical orientation, and how 'teaching mathematics…

As students develop understanding and fluency in single-digit operations such as addition, they develop sophisticated strategies and number sense (magnitude, number order, and composition). Deficits in number sense and reliance on inefficient approaches can lead to struggle in mathematics. Intervention research in this area reported effects on…

Mathematics is crucial to the educational and vocational success of students. The concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) approach is a method to teach students mathematical concepts. The CRA involves instruction with manipulatives, representations, and numbers only in different lessons (i.e., concrete lessons include manipulatives but not…

The "Reasoning Algebraically about Operations Casebook" was developed as the key resource for participants' Developing Mathematical Ideas seminar experience. The thirty-four cases, written by teachers describing real situations and actual student thinking in their classrooms, provide the basis of each session's investigation into the…

The present study aimed to examine the opinions of in-and preservice middle school mathematics teachers about teaching four operations with integers through "number line" and/or "counters". Participants were 42 middle school mathematics teachers and 51 pre-service mathematics teachers. The data were collected through open-ended…

These four chapters describe studies of using models for integer addition and subtraction. The models draw principally on the two grounding metaphors of object collection and motion along a path. A strength of all chapters is detailed analysis of how the models are and can be implemented and how they influence student's learning. Together the…

By the time they reach middle school, all students have been taught to add fractions. However, not all have "learned" to add fractions. The common mistake in adding fractions is to report that a/b + c/d is equal to (a + c)/(b + d). It is certainly necessary to correct this mistake when a student makes it. However, this occasion also…

In this paper, we report how 5-year-olds' arithmetic skills developed through participation in an 8-month-long intervention. The intervention program aimed to enhance the children's ways of experiencing numbers' part-part-whole relations as a basis for arithmetic skills and was built on principles from the variation theory of learning. The report…

This chapter describes instances of play within a teaching episode on integer addition and subtraction. Specifically, this chapter makes the theoretical distinction between integer play and playing with integers. Describing instances of integer play and playing with integers is important for facilitating this type of intellectual play in the…

This chapter focuses on the development of concepts that children draw on as they work toward understanding negative numbers. Framed from a conceptual change lens, I discuss different interpretations children have of minus signs, numerical order, numerical values, and addition and subtraction operations and how children draw on these varied…

In this article, we report the findings of a study conducted with 6 Grade 8 students in the United States. The students posed stories for open number sentences involving addition and subtraction of integers. We analysed the stories posed by the students to build models that describe the conceptual structures behind these posed stories -- the…

A single fact-focused number-string discussion is unlikely to result in all students adopting more flexible and efficient fact strategies; however, these authors have found that repeated engagement in such discussions over time does promote student reasoning about relationships, which in turn leads to increased fact fluency. By cultivating a…