Uses the children's book, "The Rajah's Rice: A Mathematical Folktale from India," as the basis for grade-four activities involving doubling and powers of two. (MKR)

Describes three approaches teachers can use to help students understand multiplication and division: calculator explorations, problem solving, and discussion topics. Specific examples are provided for primary and upper grades. (MDM)

The relationship between elementary operations underlying processing of numerical information and performance on psychometrically derived ability measures requiring processing of numbers but defining separate ability factors was studied for 102 Air Force recruits (54 males and 48 females). Patterns of convergent and discriminate relationships for…

This study demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of a constant time delay procedure (four seconds) to teach five elementary students with learning disabilities multiplication facts. Learning generalized to a paper-and-pencil task, to a different presentation orientation, and to reverse facts. (DB)

Discusses the development of multiplicative and divisional schemes within a constructivist framework. Illustrates child thinking and child methods relative to the meanings of these operations using interviews with children. Compares the constructivist perspective on the development of meanings of multiplication and division to what is found in…

Focuses on the strategies young children (N=115) use to solve rectangular covering tasks before they have been taught area measurement. Children's solution strategies were classified into five developmental levels. Emphasizes the importance of understanding the relationship between the size of a unit and the dimensions of the rectangle in learning…

This article presents a teaching experiment on the relationship between informal out-of-school and formal in-school mathematics, and the ways each can inform the other in the development of abstract mathematical knowledge. This study concerns the understanding of some aspects of the multiplicative structure of decimal numbers. It involved a series…

Deaf and hearing college students' mean reaction times (RTs) were compared on a mental calculation task in which they had to verify the accuracy of solutions to addition and multiplication problems. The deaf students were divided into higher and lower readers. Higher deaf readers and hearing students had similar RTs and accuracy on addition…

In this article, the meanings students construct and the conceptual advances they make as they deal with ratio and proportion problems are described. The study cites episodes with a second grader, two fifth graders, and three seventh graders. A critical factor in students' comprehension of and solution to ratio and proportion problems is their…

This paper is a report on the results of a 3-year teaching experiment conducted in Ithaca, New York, introducing students to the concepts of multiplication, division, and ratio as a trio, and to ratio and proportion in a project-based curriculum with heterogeneous grouping. Fractions were introduced as a subset of ratio and proportion. The paper…

This book provides regular classroom and special education teachers with alternative, individualized methods of teaching math computation skills. Learning activities are designed to appeal to auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning modalities. Six mathematics topics addressed include modeling addition and subtraction, basic facts for addition…

The performance of 13 and 17-year-olds on National Assessment items involving computation with fractions is reviewed, together with findings from related research. Recommendations for improving instruction are offered. (SD) Aspect of National Assessment (NAEP) dealt with in this document: Results (Interpretation).

A unit on problems involving large numbers can begin with calculating the amounts of ingredients needed to produce several thousand hamburgers. Other sources of computational problems are described. (SD)

This study compares the effectiveness of two methods of training preservice elementary teachers to diagnose and treat students' arithmetical errors. (SD)