Using Calculator-Assisted Instruction to Enhance Low-Achievers in Learning Number Sense: A Case Study of Two Fifth Graders in Taiwan

Der-Ching Yang,Yung-Chi Lin

doi:10.5539/jel.v4n2p64

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to use calculator-assisted instruction to help two fifth-grade low-achievers learn number sense. The research process includes three stages: (1) pre-test interview to detect what kinds of number sense the students did not have; (2) calculator-assisted instruction to help them develop number sense; and (3) post-test interview to examine if their number sense had improved. The results showed that students successfully developed two kinds of number sense abilities they did not have in the pre-test interview. However, they failed to develop the number sense ability of using a benchmark number to make an estimation. Generally, this study illustrated that these two low-achievers could learn number sense from calculator-assisted instruction.

Highlights

Number sense has been recognized as an important topic in school mathematics (Maertens, Reynvoet, De Smedt, & Elen, 2014; McIntosh, Reys, & Reys, 1992; Reys & Yang, 1998; Siegler & Ramani, 2011; Yang & Wu, 2010; Yang, 2005; Yang & Lai, 2013)
Since both of them passed Problem 2 (P2) in the pre-test interview, “Number Guessing” was not conducted with them and P2 was not given in the post-test interview either
We suspected that both low-achievers (Howard and Jane) were struggling hard to mathematize the problem context into a mathematics problem, but they were stuck in the procedure of mathematization and unable to apply the ability of finding a benchmark to make estimation successfully

Summary

Introduction

Number sense has been recognized as an important topic in school mathematics (Maertens, Reynvoet, De Smedt, & Elen, 2014; McIntosh, Reys, & Reys, 1992; Reys & Yang, 1998; Siegler & Ramani, 2011; Yang & Wu, 2010; Yang, 2005; Yang & Lai, 2013). The Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 2000) even indicates that developing number sense is central to the number and operations standard. Students with number sense can do computations in flexible or creative ways and have better intuition in doing quantitative reasoning (Olanoff et al, 2014). One can estimate the result of 299×0.99 is quite close to 300 without using the written computation method because 0.99 is close to 1; is close to 300; and 300×1 will be

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion