Elementary Skills Research Articles

Classroom Inquiry into the Conic Sections

The study of the conic sections in a high school algebra or analytic geometry class offers a unique opportunity for students to engage in productive mathematical inquiry. When accurate graphs of the conic sections are available, simple measurements lead to conjectures that can be proved by the students, using only elementary algebraic skills. However, a typical treatment of the conic sections defines each in terms of the properties, and the possibilities for student discovery are thus reduced.

Acquisition of Elementary Swimming Skills

Abstract Fifty-two beginning swimmers, aged 5 to 11, were taught by the same instructor for six consecutive 25-min. swimming lessons. One group practiced three days a week for two weeks, and the second group attended two classes a week for three weeks. Each swimmer was tested each day to determine when he completed the skill achievements (head under water, vertical float, face float, back float, 5-yd. swim, 10-yd. swim). No statistically significant difference was found between the groups on the ability to perform the six elementary water skills. The lesson frequencies investigated did not influence the ability to perform these skills. Only 16 percent of the 5, 6, and 7 year age group could swim 5 yards following six lessons. From the older group (8, 9, 10 years), 68 percent performed the swimming skills in six lessons. There appears to be some justification for changing the order of teaching elementary water skills.

Teaching Gifted Elementary Pupils Research Concepts and Skills

Teaching Gifted Elementary Pupils Research Concepts and Skills

Forming Elementary Ideas of Number in Children

As polytechnical training in the schools is implemented, demands that children assimilate the mathematical disciplines has significantly increased. The first and most elementary of these is arithmetic. In schools, pupils acquire counting skill, learn how to operate with numbers. But the content of number as an index of equal-sized large quantities must and should be formed in children even before school. Even in early childhood elementary skill in counting is developed and during this process for the first time the idea of large numbers takes shape and then the concept of number. Naturally the thing that interests researchers and practising pedagogues are questions about what, as the child gets to know the quantitative aspects of surrounding reality as these first skills are developed in him, stimulates this process.

Teacher Education in Algebra

(1953). Teacher Education in Algebra. The American Mathematical Monthly: Vol. 60, No. 6, pp. 367-375.