Despite the important role that metacognition plays in school mathematics, attention has only recently turned to primary grades. The aim of this exploratory qualitative study was to find out to what extent 6 second graders engage in metacognitive behaviors during mathematics problem-solving. The analysis was based on the adaptation of the…

At the start of every school year, teachers typically wonder what their new students know coming into the grade level. Sometimes, though, they place too much emphasis on what children do not know or have forgotten over summer break. After all, those gaps can be glaring. Helping their students grow is like helping an acorn grow; they must watch for…

Engaging students in a challenging (cognitively demanding) task and launching a mathematics lesson with a task before instruction are two characteristics of a reform-oriented approach to mathematics instruction often considered together. The authors systematically contrasted teaching with challenging tasks using a task-first lesson structure with…

Using a cluster-randomized controlled trial research design, this study investigates the effect of the first year of a three-year teacher professional development program on grades 1 and 2 student achievement in mathematics. Although the findings reported in the present report do not meet the standard cutoff for statistical significance (e.g., 95%…

Although some students might struggle with problem posing, the positive effects on student learning and abilities may be far reaching for those who engage in this activity. Problem posing requires students to create their own problems rather than to solve problems posed by others. Problem posing is not regularly taught; however, reform proponent…

This report describes efforts to measure teachers' knowledge of their own students' abilities in mathematics and offers preliminary findings. It provides a description of the sample, a description of the study design and its realization, and descriptive statistics for teacher judgment accuracy. The work described here was completed as part of a…

Scholars have long argued that individuals' beliefs influence their behaviors and the decisions they make throughout their lives. Focusing on beliefs as a cognitive construct, the purpose of this study was to identify several key beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning held by practicing elementary mathematics teachers. An iterative…

Scholars have long argued that individuals' beliefs influence their behaviors and the decisions they make throughout their lives. Focusing on beliefs as a cognitive construct, the purpose of this study was to identify several key beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning held by practicing elementary mathematics teachers. An iterative…

Increasing availability of digital devices in elementary school classrooms presents exciting new opportunities for teachers to support the teaching and learning of mathematics. Although many of the math applications available for these devices focus on drill and practice of mathematical procedures, screencasting apps can help support effective…

Experts think in patterns and structures using the specific "language" of their domains. For mathematicians, these patterns and structures are represented by numbers, symbols and their relationships (Stokes, 2014a). To determine whether elementary students in the United States could learn to think in mathematical patterns to solve…

While there is widespread agreement on the importance of incorporating problem solving and reasoning into mathematics classrooms, there is limited specific advice on how this can best happen. This is a report of an aspect of a project that is examining the opportunities and constraints in initiating learning by posing challenging mathematics tasks…

Soroban abacus training is called as mental arithmetic training in our country. It is known for mental arithmetic to increase the ability of four mode operations. Besides this, how is the situation for the students which are having Soroban abacus training in the terms of problem solving abilities, creativity, development of concepts, attraction…

Teachers' ability to elicit and build on students' mathematical thinking during instruction is critical in order to support students' mathematical growth. An emerging hypothesis in the field is that the construct of a "learning trajectory" (LT) has the potential to support teachers in making sense of and using student…

Counting strategies initially used by young children to perform simple addition are often replaced by more efficient counting strategies, decomposition strategies and rule-based strategies until most answers are encoded in memory and can be directly retrieved. Practice is thought to be the key to developing fluent retrieval of addition facts. This…

Nervous about teaching math to young children? Too pressed for time to teach all of the math concepts children need to know? Now there's a practical, stress-free guide to one of the most effective ways to enhance children's mathematical thinking in pre-K-Grade 3--by weaving math concepts into storytime. Ready for any educator to pick up and start…