LESSON 8 PRIMARY CHILDRENS LEARNING STRATEGIES IN ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION

Introduction Young children begin learning mathematics before they enter school and when they are formally in early primary school. They learn to count and they can solve simple problems by counting. After the counting stage, they progress towards developing understanding in addition and subtraction as well as related facts and strategies associated with these operations. They develop strategies for adding and subtracting whole numbers on the basis of their earlier work with small numbers. Then the instruction focus shift towards helping students develop quick recall of addition and related subtraction facts, as well as fluency with multi-digit addition and subtraction. Unpacking ideas related to addition and subtraction strategies is a critical step in establishing deeper understanding. To someone without training as a teacher, these ideas and strategies might appear to be simple to teach. But those who teach primary school students are aware of the subtleties and complexities of the ideas themselves and the challenges of presenting them clearly and coherently in the classroom. Teachers for primary school students should have an idea of the overarching importance of addition and subtraction strategies and these big ideas will be discuss in this lesson. LEARNING OUTCOMES Upon the completion of this lesson, you should be able to: 1. Determine the type of strategies children use in addition and subtraction. 2. Describe and discuss childrens conceptual understanding in additive reasoning and how to develop them through.

Strategies in Addition and Subtraction The strategies that primary school children use to memorize, conceptualise, reason, and solve problems grow increasingly effective and flexible, and are applied more broadly, with age and

experience. But different strategies are not solely related to age. To demonstrate the variety, consider the specific case of the addition of single-digit numbers, which has been the subject of a great deal of cognitive research. Given a problem such as 3 + 5, it was initially believed that preschool children add up from 1 (i.e., 1,2,3, / 4,5,6,7,8), that six to eight-years-old add by counting from the larger number (i.e., 5, then 6, 7, 8,), and that from 9 years on, children retrieve answers from memory because they know the answer (Ashcraft, 1985; Resnick and Ford, 1981). Children can capitalize on the strengths of different strategies and use each one for the problems for which its advantages are greatest. For example, for an easy addition problem such as 4+1, first graders are likely to retrieve the answer; for problems with large differences between the numbers, such as 2+9, they are likely to count from the larger number ("9,10,11"); for problems excluding both of these cases, such as 6+7, they are likely to count from one (Geary, 1994; Siegler, 1988). The adaptiveness of these strategy choices increases as children gain experience with the domain, and this is obvious even in early years (Lemaire and Siegler, 1995). The fact that children use diverse strategies is not a mere idiosyncrasy of human cognition. Good reasons exist for people to know and use multiple strategies. Strategies differ in their accuracy, in the amounts of time their execution requires, in their processing demands, and in the range of problems to which they apply. Strategy choices involve tradeoffs among these properties. The broader the range of strategies that children know and can appreciate where they apply, the more precisely they can shape their approaches to the demands of particular circumstances. Once it is recognized that children know multiple strategies and choose among them, the question arises: How do they construct such strategies in the first place? This question is answered through studies in which individual children who do not yet know a strategy are given prolonged experiences (weeks or months) in the subject matter; in this way, researchers can study how children devise their various strategies (Siegler and Crowley, 1991; DeLoache et al., 1985). These are referred to as "micro-genetic" studies, meaning small-scale studies of the development of a concept. In this approach, one can identify when a new strategy is first used, which in turn allows examination of what the experience of discovery was like, what led to the discovery, and how the discovery was generalized beyond its initial use. The episodes below gave a descriptive analysis of the strategies, meanings that the children gave to the tasks and the conceptual advances they made as they dealt with tasks involving additive structures. These are excerpts of pertinent data from primary 2 and primary 3 childrens self generated algorithm. The data is given in the conversation and graphic forms whenever necessary. R denotes the researcher who was doing the interview, and letters of the alphabet represents the subjects. The objective is to understand childrens conceptual understanding in additive reasoning and how they develop them through. Case Study Of Additive Reasoning In A Group Of Primary Two and Primary Three Children. R: What is 12 + 9? Lim : Use 8 from 9 to make 20, leaving 1 which is added to 20 to get 21. Ram : Count on by tens : 12, 22, then back off one 21.

R: S:

How about 14 5? You break up 14 into 4 and 10, then 4 plus 10 minus 5, (within few seconds) 9.

R: Why did you break up? S: Because its easy for 10 minus 5. R: What is ten minus 5? S: 5. R: I see. R: Why not 4 5? S: How can a small number minus a big number? Cannot! R: What about 17 9? (after a few seconds) S: 8. R: How did you do it? S: Same like just nowuse the break up method 7 plus 10 minus 9 (doing in head and after a few seconds) 8! R: Wow, you are fast.

her

From the interview above, Sharan (S) has developed this construction of 10 as a unit. She was able to decompose a unit into tens and ones very efficiently and the unit 10 is a benchmark for her in subtraction or addition. This strategy is called Making Ten which means Sharan has constructed ten as an abstract unit and has the intention of making ten in her calculations. Student was shown a card that read : 32 + 9 = L: Use 8 from 9 to make 40, leaving 1 which is the added to 40 to get 41. Taking eight from nine is compensated for by putting it with thirty-two and this strategy is called Compensation, which is duly enhanced by thinking in units. M: Counts on by tens: 32, 42 , then back off one 41 Student was shown another card: 34 7 = N: Treats 34 as 30 and 4, 30 7 is 23, now add the 4 which is 27. B: Subtracting in parts; 34 4 is 30, 30- 3 is 27. Bo : Adding 3 to make a convenient 37; 37 7 = 30, now subtract the 3 which added yielding 27. R: What is 29 + 58 (shown on a card) V: Sa : P : D : Takes 1 from 8 to put with the 9 to make 10, , 50 + 20 + 10 is 80, 80 + 7 ( 7 left) is 87. 30 + 58 is 88, one less is 87. 70 + 17 is 87. Counting up from 58, 68, 78, 87.

R: Ki :

What is -

74 28

(shown on a card)

Subtracting 20 from 70 which is 50, subtract 8 from 4 which is four in the hole so subtract 4 from 50 46.

J : Add 4 at the beginning and subtract it out at the end; 74 + 4 is 78, 78 28 = 50, now subtract 4, 46. Ka : 74 24 is 50. Now subtract the remaining 4.

These children used a variety of thinking strategies in solving the task given. These strategies do differ in their accuracy, in the amount of time taken to solve the task and the type of task to which they can be applied. The broader the range of strategies that children know, the better they can shape their approaches to the demand of particular circumstances. These children can capitalize on the strength of different strategies and used each one for which its advantages are greatest. Case Study of A Primary Three Child in Additive Reasoning R: I am interested in how you think about mathematics. So, I would like for you to talk to me a little bit how you solve maths problems. Let me just start with : What would 31+ 19 be? 50. How did you think about that? I just did 30 and then 10 and 9 and 1. Where did that 30 come from that you used? 31. So you took the 30 from 31 and what did you do next? I took the 30 and the 10 from the 19 and put the 9 and the 1 together. Great. See, I am interested in you are thinking about that. What would 42 and 18 be? 60. How did you get that? 40 and the 10 would be 50 and then the 8 and the 2.

S: R: S: R: S: R: S: R: S: R: S:

S was able to split each number into tens an ones and was able to add both numbers by adding both the tens and ones respectively. His thinking was from left to right rather than the traditional way of right to left. His thinking strategy was similar to the one used earlier by L, V and J which is called compensation, because taking one from 31 is compensated for by adding one to nineteen. These children are able to think of a two-digit number as consisting of groups of tens and ones. They can conceptualise ten as an iterable unit, without losing the meaning of the number as a

number, In other words, for these children, ten is an iterable unit, a thing that can be counted as a unit, so that the number 17 is conceptualise as one ten and seven ones. These strategies have great impact on teachers. They should realise that different children think differently and their thinking must be accepted and respected, and that number concept, as the other mathematical concepts and skills, is developed over time. The following section provides a verbatim of another grade three childs construction in additve. Ke Yang was a primary 3 student in a private school in Kuala Lumpur. He was a good natured, confident and co-operative boy who answered all the questions posed to him during the interview. In the initial part of the interview, he was asked some basic questions pertaining to his idea of mathematics. Outlined below is the excerpt of the conversation with K. Question 1 (a) 27 +9 (b) 27 + 9 = ___

These question were posed to analyse his arithmetic thinking. The rationale for posing these two tasks was based on the researchers premise that previous investigation has found that children who have received traditional textbook-based instruction frequently considered horizontal and vertical tasks involving the same numbers as separate, unrelated tasks. R: K: R: K: R: K: What is 27 + 9 --

It is 36. How did you get that? 7 plus 9 equals 16 add 1 up equals 3, so I get 36 What about 27 + 9 ? Its the same, 36. This one (points to previous question) is straight and this one is horizontal (points to the current question).

R: So, both give the same answers ? K: Yes. He used the traditional method of 27 , i.e. 7 + 9 = 19 and carried 1 up with balance 6 +9 to get 36. (27 + 9), He knew that they were the same. R : What about 36 +46 = __ K: The answer is 82 ( in about 5 seconds). R: Can you explain this ? K: I take the 6 off so 30 plus 40 equals 70 and then 6 plus 6 equals 12, so 12 plus 70 equals 82. R: O.K.

R: K:

What about 36 + 46 + 10 = ___? Same thing, 82 plus 10 equals 92. He did 36 + 46 mentally by 30 + 40 + 6 + 6 = 70 + 12 = 72. The following task (36 + 46 + 10) was solved by comparing it with the previous task and adding 10 to it. He could see a relationship between the two tasks. R : All right, what about 36 + __ = 53 K: The answer is 17. (in a matter of seconds) R: Did you do that mentally ? K: Yes. R: Can you explain? K: One ten should be added and 6 to 7. It was observed that K constructed the solution in his head. He said that one ten should be added (30 + 10 = 40) and then 6 to 7 (6 + 7 = 13) and finally added them up (40 + 13 = 53). He could conceptualise the one ten and the unit of 7 he added as 17. Throughout the process, he did not use the worksheet at all to record any calculations. K: Yes, but I can double check (and he did the following work steps ): 53 36 17

He verified his answer in the traditional way. This shows that he has a good understanding of abstract units of tens and ones. R: Now, can you attempt 50 - 9 = __ K: Its 41. R : How do you get that ? K: Because 50 minus 9, I count it backwards. R: How do you do that ? K: In my mind and I use my fingers. K puts out 10 fingers and then folds each finger (from the viewing of the video tape recording , it was observed that he just looked at his fingers for about 1 second or less). This is 41. R : Can you try the last question ? 60 - 19 = __ K: This should be easy. K: 41. (In matter of seconds) R: How did you get that ? K: Mental math. R: What do you mean by mental math ? K: 60 minus 19, so I can do it here. ( points to his worksheet) 60 - 19 ----41

R : How do you do that ? K: I put this in my mind, very quick. 60 minus 19, so I cross that out. I cant do it that fast in writing. So, itll be 10 minus 9 equals 1, and Im left with 5. What he did was actually 10 - 9 = 1(for the ones place) and 5 - 1 = 4 (for the tens place) so it is 41. Actually the researcher was anticipating that he would see the relationship with the previous task and just subtract 10 from it, however, it could not be said that he could not see the relationship with the previous task. It might be that he wanted to show the researcher his mental prowess. In this arithmetic task situation, his construction was not image-supported. He did not have to create or rely on situations of specific imagery to solve the tasks. And furthermore in the task of 36 + __ = 53, it can be observed that, Ke Yangs tasks in solving this problem was to find how many tens and ones would have to be added to 30 and 6 to make 50 and 3. The metaphor implicit in the solution seems to be that of manipulating collections. This is because typically, his solution involved partitioning two digit numbers into a tens part and a ones part. As further clarification of collection based solutions, it should be noted that in the task of 36 + 46 = __ , he reasoned it by stating that 30 and 40 are 70, six and six are 12 ,and 70 and 12 are 82. By using this partitioning algorithm, he need not create either numerical composites of ten or abstract composite units. Instead, 30 and 40 could be unitary conceptual entities. Furthermore, in the questions of 50 - 9 = __ and 60 - 19 = __ , he related the latter to the former by stating that I just have to add 10 These solutions are consistent with his construction of the collection-based thinking strategy. He was able to routinely partition two-digit numbers and maybe three-digit numbers if we had probed further. His mental construction suggests that Ke Yang might be a conceptually advanced student and could objectify numerical part-whole relationships. Mathematics in the elementary school often has computation as a focus. Even though research has suggested broadening of mathematics curriculum, many educators and parents cling to the belief that mathematics is about becoming skillful at performing paper and pencil computations rapidly, so that it can be done without thought. However, the outcome of this research indicates that children enter school with a great deal of informal or intuitive knowledge of mathematics that can serve as the basis for developing understanding of the mathematics of the primary school curriculum. Without formal or direct instruction on specific number facts, algorithms, or procedures, children can construct viable solutions to a variety of problems. Basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division can be defined in terms of these intuitive problem-solving processes, and symbolic procedures can be developed as extensions of them. Hence, it is suggested that the emphasis should be on making sense to make learning more meaningful. These analyses provide a framework for understanding the thinking strategies that children use to solve problems. The discussion starts with an analysis of addition and subtraction problems. Thinking strategies analysis are one way we can encourage students to build fundamental relationships and develop efficient ways of adding. Using this analysis, I have attempted to detail the evolution of childrens thinking strategies for solving these problems as a) Double + 1 b) Making ten c) Compensation

Many students find it easy to learn doubles because of symmetry. Knowing doubles can be a basis for solving many problems by converting a task to one involving doubles. A student might find 6 + 7 by thinking 6 + 6 and one more. This is called the doubles-plus-one thinking strategy. A double minus one thinking strategy is equally useful. When considering 9 + 7, students have a variety of ways of determining the sum. Making Ten is one thinking strategy that has proven to be quite powerful. Using this thinking strategy, a student might reason that by taking one from seven and putting it with the nine, the task is changed to 10 + 6, which can be seen as 16. A student who uses this method has obviously constructed ten as an abstract unit and forms the intention of making ten. Thus, for such students, ten has become a benchmark number that has special significance. If a student has not constructed ten as a mathematical object, she or he will not see this strategy as a possibility and may instead, have to count-on or rely on memorised facts that may have little meaning. Another thinking strategy is compensation. The task considered in the paragraph above, 9 + 7 could be solved by moving one from nine to the seven making 8 + 8. Since many students know their doubles, 16 can be determined. This strategy is called compensation because adding one to the seven compensates for taking one from the nine. In a similar manner, a student might determine 23 + 17 by shifting three from 23 to 17 making 20 + 20, which can then be easily be renamed as 40. These children are able to think of a two-digit number as consisting of groups of tens and ones. They can conceptualise ten as an iterable unit, without losing the meaning of the number as a number, In other words for these children, ten is an iterable unit, a thing that can be counted as a unit, so that the number 17 is conceptualised as one ten and seven ones. These strategies have great impact on teachers. They should realise that different children think differently and their thinking must be accepted and respected, and that number concepts, as the other mathematical concept and skills, is developed over time. Activities should also allow for children to respond at different levels. The outcome of this research on childrens thinking is that we cannot expect children to make sense of a technique or method that is beyond their zone of potential construction. Children seem to take in only those new ideas that they are prepared to hear at that moment (Davis, 1992, p. 235). From my observation, many students (even higher grades) rely on counting as a primary method of adding. These students seem to have stagnated in their construction of numbers with an inefficient procedural method (Wheatley, 1999). This is not to say that counting cannot be meaningful but that for many children it becomes a substitute for sense making. Childrens present form of learning subtraction in school is solely based as take away but if we scrutinise the problems in daily lives, it occurs in situations involving changing, equalizing and comparing (Fuson, 1992). Initially, children model the action and relations in problems, reflecting the distinctions portrayed in the analysis of problem types. Over time, these physical modelling strategies will

give way to more efficient counting strategies, which are generally more abstract ways of modelling a problem. Eventually children will come to rely on number facts, but the learning of number facts is not necessarily a rote skill. It can and should be built upon an understanding of number relations, which are supported by a foundation of number sense developed through using modelling and counting strategies. Thinking in collections is a promising alternative as shown by these children from the interviews. By a collection approach to early number development means focusing on childrens construction of units. A child has developed an abstract concept of numbers when he/she has mental imagery associated with a numeral, number word or set of objects and can flexibly use the unit in adding or subtracting and can decompose the unit into singleton units. The development of thinking strategies such as compensation (6 + 8 is 14 because 7 + 7 =14; taking one from eight is compensated for by putting one with six) is enhanced by thinking in units. In a collection approach, children may at first only form static images but as they continue to construct ideas about numbers, this image can become dynamic and quite useful. Thinking in collection strategies is one way we can encourage students to build fundamental relationships and develop efficient ways of adding or subtracting.

Activity 8.1 Based on the case studies provided above, briefly describe how it can be utilize in your classroom teaching. _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________________ _________