A 14-year-old Brazilian boy in the fourth grade was given 170 problems orally, each asking for the sum of 2 2-digit numbers. Responses indicated he had invented his own algorithm for addition, similar to the school one, based largely on his experiences with money. (Contains 13 references.) (JAF)

This study attempted to identify the things that help elementary school students solve verbal problems. Among the types of things included for examination were: the attributes of problems, the tools used, and the problem transformations that were possible. The summary of findings is comprised of 29 diverse types of statements grouped under four…

Preschool children (n=115) in Poland were tested in five areas: counting, equipotency of sets, dividing, adding, and comparing. Results showed that these children already had informal knowledge of many of the concepts and skills included in the mathematics curriculum in the early grades. (PDD)

After a year of instruction, 70 kindergarten children were individually interviewed as they solved basic, multistep, and nonroutine word problems. Thirty-two used a valid strategy for all 9 problems, and 44 correctly answered 7 or more problems. Modeling provided a unifying framework for thinking about problem solving. (Author/MDH)

Children begin school with the ability to use their informal and implicit conceptual knowledge to guide their problem solving, but shift to the use of superficial strategies in their attempts to solve word problems as they progress through school. This paper describes a study designed to investigate the effects of an instructional sequence that…