Is your classroom mental?? Guidelines for enhancing the development of strategies for mental computation: Emilia Mardjetko and Julie Macpherson put a strong case for an emphasis on developing mental calculation strategies with students and suggest helpful teaching approaches to achieve this.

From: Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom | Date: June 22, 2007| Author: | Copyright information

Without pen, paper or calculator how would you work out the answer to this question -46+68? Now take 15 away from 32.

What methods did you employ? For the addition question did you first add 40 and 60 together then add six plus eight and combine the 100 with 14-just like Steve in Figure 1? This method of splitting both numbers, using knowledge of place value, and then adding the parts of each number working from left to right (tens before units) is referred to as left to right separated place value. Perhaps you used Laura's strategy (Figure 1), leaving 68 whole, then adding 40 ...

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