In Singapore, primary school students are taught to use bar diagrams to represent known and unknown values in algebraic word problems. However, little is known about students' understanding of these graphical representations. We investigated whether students use and think of the bar diagrams in a concrete or a more abstract fashion. We also…

This article describes a unit of instruction designed to promote algebraic thinking in second graders. Students examined second- and fourth-grade students' ages and heights on a table and graph and described the patterns that they observed in the data.