This conceptual paper discusses two frameworks, developed independently by the lead author, that will provide the conceptual foundation for the identification and evaluation of mental computation strategies students demonstrate during an upcoming research project entitled Mental Computation in Year 5. These frameworks will be used by the lead…

Our research focuses on developing elementary students' mental computation skills with the help of card games. Choosing this area of study was motivated by our personal experiences, namely, that mathematics programmes of study do not lay emphasis on this aspect; there are too few hours dedicated to developing this skill, and several mental…

This research aimed to examine whether the activities related to mental computation strategies had any effect on the development of the second-grade elementary school students' problem-solving (PS) skills. Participants of the study are comprised of 14 children aged 7-8 years and enrolled in the second grade of the elementary school of a village.…

This paper reports on results of a targeted and extended (two school terms) program for building Grade 3 and Grade 4 students' facility with number facts and application for mental computation. As part of a larger project, this paper reports results from two schools. Results indicated strong gains in number fact recall and mental computation for…

The current study examines the mental computation performance owned by students at fifth grade. This study was carried out with 118 fifth graders (11-12-year-olds) studying at 3 randomly selected primary schools that served low and middle socio-economic areas in a city of Turkey. "Mental Computation Test (MCT)" has been used to reach how…

This article investigates the effect of kinesthetic educational game on students' mental computation speed. A Solomon four-group design was used to avoid the influence of pretest-posttest design. In order to determine which grade is appropriate for this game, a pilot study was conducted with 30 students. As for the main study, 123 students…

This study analyzed children's use of mental computation strategies and the standard algorithm on multi-digit subtractions. Fifty-eight Flemish 4th graders of varying mathematical achievement level were individually offered subtractions that either stimulated the use of mental computation strategies or the standard algorithm in one choice and two…

National testing and reform agendas, with their focus on school improvement, has led to increased collection and scrutiny of student data. The analysis of these data usually occurs at a school level, often by school leaders. What is less common is the opportunity for students to scrutinise their individual data and take ownership over the results…

There is a growing awareness that many children are not developing fast and accurate retrieval-based strategies for solving single-digit addition problems. In this study we individually assessed 166 third and fourth grade children to identify a group of children (called accurate-min-counters) who frequently solved simple single-digit addition…

Given the hypothesis that card games form a strong tool capable of shaping the aforementioned interest, this study has developed a card game called Math Zap as a pedagogical tool for numeracy skills development in the context of mental computation. It is geared towards investigating the efficacy of this Math Zap card game, in facilitating the…

Although the early development of children's number sense is a strong predictor of their later mathematics achievements, it has been overlooked in primary schools in Malaysia. Mainly attributable to underdeveloped number sense of Malaysian primary and secondary school children, their inability to handle simple mathematics tasks, which require the…

The main goal of the current study is to develop intervention of learning to promote students' understanding of percentage. The design of the interventions employed the spatial representation of percentage in the form of a bar model and was designed based on the pedagogical concepts of Realistic Mathematics Education (RME). The participants were…

This review examines reasons for Malaysian pupils' underperformance in solving mathematics problems that demand numerical estimation and mental computation. Their underdeveloped number sense appears to be the major reason. According to the Ministry of Education, the national mathematics curriculum is unlikely to account for this underachievement.…

This paper reports on a study to examine mental computation strategies used by Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 students to solve addition and subtraction problems. The participants in this study were twenty five 7 to 9 year-old students identified as excellent, good and satisfactory in their mathematics performance from a school in Penang, Malaysia.…

Math fact fluency involves the quick, accurate retrieval of basic arithmetic combinations and the ability to use this fact knowledge efficiently. Math fact retrieval is typically considered fluent when performed accurately within 2 to 3 seconds, and "efficiency" refers to students' ability to apply fact knowledge to more complex…