Our work investigated how six primary school students used a non-traditional method for adding and subtracting: the ABN method, a Spanish acronym for Open (method) Based on Numbers. Commognitive theory [Sfard, A. 2008. "Thinking as Communicating: Human Development, the Growth of Discourses, and Mathematizing." New York: Cambridge…

The current longitudinal study measured 279 kindergartners' (M[subscript age] = 5.76 years; SD = 0.55; 135 females) place value understanding using both approximate and syntactic measures based on previous evidence that early variation in performance on approximate measures was associated with subsequent syntactic place value understanding. In the…

Estimation supports the development of higher level mathematical thinking and reasoning; however, has received relatively little research attention. We examined whether making predictions influences the accuracy of numerosity estimates in elementary-aged children, and whether the amount of information available to the estimator determines the…

Model-eliciting activities (MEAs) challenge students to interpret a problem and collaboratively create solutions using the engineering design process. This Innovation to Practice article describes how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teacher educators can use MEAs to build elementary teachers' understanding of computational…

This study examined how embodied learning experiences support students to grasp abstract CT concepts in early primary education. Forty-seven students were recruited from first- and second-grade classrooms. They had five embodied activities that simulated robot programming tasks requiring students to (1) figure out a route from a starting point to…

Research showed that the capacity of making simple estimations begins to develop already at the age of five, but little is known about the early development of this estimation capacity and the strategies that underly it. The current study longitudinally followed the estimation capacity and strategies of 332 children from first to second grade of…

This purpose of this quasi-experimental, ex-post facto study was to examine the effect of SpringMath as a classwide intervention for students in grades kindergarten through second grade within one elementary school. In order to research the effects of SpringMath on the whole-number computational fluency of kindergarten through second grade…

Children's early accuracy on place value (PV) tasks longitudinally predicts their later multidigit calculation skills. However, another window into children's emerging base-ten concepts is the pattern of errors -- "smart errors" -- they exhibit on these measures. Past research has speculated that these smart errors -- similar to invented…

Within the field of K-2 computer science (CS) education, unplugged computational thinking (CT) activities have been suggested as beneficial for younger students and shown to impact young students' skills and motivation to learn about CS. This study sought to examine how children demonstrate CT competencies in unplugged sequencing tasks and how…

The results of this study revealed students' solution strategies progressed from inefficient strategies e.g., counting on fingers to more efficient strategies with mathematical connections. These findings should enable educators to gain more insight to use Number Talks to help student develop computational fluency with numbers.

Computational thinking (CT) has permeated primary and early childhood education in recent years. Despite the extensive effort in CT learning initiatives, few age-appropriate assessment tools targeting young children have been developed. In this study, we proposed Computational Thinking Test for Lower Primary (CTtLP), which was designed for lower…

The aim of this study was to improve the 2nd- and 3rd-graders' conceptual subitizing skills by using in-class activities, and to examine whether the practice affects the students' basic number processing skills, calculation performance and overall mathematics achievement in the long run. The training was carried out for eight weeks (640 min in…

The aim of this study was to investigate second-grade elementary school students' performance related to their counting skills, place value understanding, and addition operation in natural numbers. A total of 205 second-grade elementary school students from Turkey participated in this study. The data were collected through a 'Personal Information…

For schools implementing Response-to-Intervention, it is important to understand how to efficiently intensify interventions. Treatment intensity, or intervention design, is a critical yet overlooked and understudied aspect in math. More frequent dosage results in greater student gains. However, questions remain regarding how teaching episodes…

Exact arithmetic abilities require symbolic numerals, which constitute a precise representation of quantities, such as the Arabic digits. Numerical thinking, however, also engages an intuitive non-linguistic number sense, the Approximate Number System (ANS). The ANS allows us to discriminate quantities, approximate arithmetic transformations, and…