Case 1
This is a whole class situation in the „Morning meeting‟ where teacher Lirika, expands the daily
objectives. She starts with a problem that she takes from math textbook for secondary grade (p.109).
Afterwards, she picks out 12 counters from a box and asks three children to come to the board. The
teacher than shares out the counters in a „one for each of them‟ order and when the counters are
shared out, the three children count their counters and then saw that they have four each. She writes
in the table, 12:3=4 and explains how it relates with multiplication 4x3=12. She presented another
example from the textbook: Four friends equally share 24 candies. How many candies each of them
have? The students discussed that the answer is related with multiplication and in that case, answer is
6 because 4x6=24.
Thus, it was supposed that students understand the division as „sharing equally‟ and as the inverse
operation of multiplication. After this situation, the teacher invited children to work in their learning
centers, where they have to solve problems in their student‟s textbook (p.80).
We observed students how they „filled‟ their worksheet. Most of them just memorized the
multiplication table …and used the calculation (in their mind or using the counters or other things that
they had in their learning centers).