This activity provides students with opportunities to practice addition strategies and explore probability in this adaptation of the classic probability game Greedy Pig. To play, you will need a 6-sided dice, a number chart, and a brown counter to represent the mouse, and a yellow counter to represent the cheese. The game is suitable for two or…

In this article, the authors argue that teachers need to possess appropriate understanding and diverse pedagogies to successfully move learners from additive to multiplicative thinking. Herein, they offer five pedagogical strategies that teachers can use to help students make this transition. Some of the challenges of learning multiplicative…

Mathematics educators and researchers have advocated for the use of manipulatives to teach mathematics for decades. The purpose of this article is to provide illustrative uses of a readily available manipulative rather than a complete list. From an Australian perspective, Pop-it fidget toys can be used across the mathematics curriculum. This paper…

It is frequently surprising to new teachers (and even those with experience) when they find that not only do some children need to recount the group they have just counted to be assured of the total but also that this need seems to be resistant to intervention. Although moving from "counting-all" to "count-on" is sometimes…

The relationships between three critical elements, and the associated mathematical language, to assist students to make the critical transition from additive to multiplicative thinking are examined in this article by Chris Hurst.

Stephen Tucker presents a fractions game that addresses a range of fraction concepts including equivalence and computation. The REFractions game also improves students' fluency with representing, comparing and adding fractions.

Marlene Chesney describes a piece of research where the participants were asked to complete a calculation, 16 + 8, and then asked to describe how they solved it. The diversity of invented strategies will be of interest to teachers along with the recommendations that are made. So "how do 'you' solve 16 + 8?"

This article outlines how a Brisbane independent school, Clayfield College, improved the ability of its Year 3 students to solve addition and subtraction word problems by utilising a schematic approach. It was observed that while students could read the words in the text of a written problem, many had difficulty identifying the core information…