Considering how a young child would intuitively approach word problems helps us to explore the range of problem types within addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Here is a brief account of how an understanding of the operations develops in the preschool years. Young children’s understanding of the operations develops out of their understanding of counting.
An accessible overview of the mathematics of operations. Patterning, decomposition, place value, and equivalence are all key ideas underlying an understanding of operations.
This story is written not for children, but for prospective and practicing teachers. It takes the child’s point of view about operations and presents the adventure in an amusing manner that will
Multiplication and division are often considered to be too mathematically complex for young children. However, we see that young children engage in multiplicative reasoning as they play and that their
Children have intuitive ideas about operating on number from a very early age. This piece helps us begin to think about the ways in which young children encounter operations in
One of our main goals is to help participants understand the importance of assessing children’s thinking. This activity engages participants in bug detection and analysis; that is, figuring out the thinking
Getting started with solving addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems begins by asking teachers to rethink their existing ideas of teaching the operations and providing opportunities for teachers to see that
