The results on Task 11 and 12 raised some questions about how children relate multiplication to addition. Although 4 children eventually found the solution to four multiplied by two and 34 found the solution to five multiplied by three, how they arrived at the solutions and how they conceptualized the operation were highly variable. Repeated addition was the primary conceptualization indicated by comments and by how the blocks were grouped. What experiences should children have prior to the interpretation? First grade children seem to be able to use manipulative to engage in the solving of problems involving a*n where a is the number of sets and n is the n is the fixed set size.
Tasks 13 and 14 involved two different kind of division. Since 42 children could do the measurement kind of problem and 38 could do the partition kind of problem, activities with materials that involved both kinds of thinking seemed appropriate. On the partition task, several different kinds of distribution were used-one at a time, then a smaller number, and so on.
Task 15 indicated a lack of recognition of penny-nickel relationships on the part of too many children to make analysis of responses meaningful.
Twenty-four was a surprisingly large number of children to solve the division problem involving a remainder. All children grouped the units to obtain the answer.
The trading of units for a long (grouping) was much easier for these children than the reverse trade (decomposing).