Presents an activity on visualizing fingers for arithmetic, counting, and multiplication. (ASK)

In this article, the author presents an innovative approach to teaching multiplication facts for children in middle school or younger. After introducing the dangers of some contradictions that persist, relating a brief summary of related research and guidelines regarding math facts and their relation to strategic approaches to more complex math,…

Learning mathematics has traditionally been thought of as a sequential progression. Children learn to count to 10, then to 20, and then to 100. They learn to add without regrouping and then with regrouping. The authors teach addition before multiplication and the two-times table before the six-times table. They usually teach division as a separate…

The author explains how "structured material such as the Colour-Factor Set can show all the properties, patterns and characters of numbers. Given the mastery over numbers with which these materials provide children, he condemns teachers who require children "to learn multiplication tables by rote and the so-called four rules by…

By providing children with both the tools to learn basic facts and access to facts not yet learned, teachers give children the freedom to attend to the meaning of algorithms and word problems, which play an important role in the application of mathematics in daily life. (MP)

This article describes how the story of Alice in Wonderland helps students understand the operation of multiplying by a rational number less than 1 and related aspects of ratio and proportion. Included with this article is a "How Tall Is Alice?" Worksheet. (Contains 1 table and 6 figures.)

Presents a study which compared the achievement and basic process understanding of groups of pupils (12 fourth grade classes in four school systems) who were taught multidigit multiplication by either the distributive method or the lattice method. (ED)

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand numbers. Use geometric representations to teach and reinforce the multiplication tables. (Editor)

Use of an ancient method of mental calculation with aliquot parts is illustrated. Other tips for helping children reason are also included. (MNS)

The purpose of this study was to document and trace how students' understanding of situations that involve finding a fractional part of a fraction developed during a course of instruction in which students explored and represented various kinds of situations using each of the five representational systems. A class of 5th grade students (n=22)…

Uses the geoboard as an aid in developing an intuitive "feel for the relationship between sums of numbers in a two by two matrix. Numbers in the matrix are represented as "area numbers on the geoboard. (RP)

Early experience with grouping objects is valuable for later understanding of and work with place value, division, and multiplication. Examples are drawn from the Developing Mathematical Processes Curriculum Project at the Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning. (RS)