Discussion
The first steps toward engaging in collaborative action research in the mathematics classroom are vital in establishing quality research projects, designed and implemented jointly by classroom teachers and universities (Raymond (2004). This collaborative research helps us not only to engage in the classroom inquiry, but as practical research it contributes to improve teaching and student achievements. The variation of ways in which young students experience word problems has been the focus of this research. The findings illustrate that even students of the same age, have different experiences and capabilities in solving mathematical problems. The drawings and notations made by children in this study illustrate the process of gradual generalisation, from concrete details to abstraction. Van de Wale, suggested that multiplication and division activities should begin with models before word problems (Van de Wale, 2004). So, in Case 1,„sharing equally„ shown by the teacher‟s demonstration was the first confrontation of students with division and the basis for the development of initial concepts related to multiplications and divisions (Greer , 1992; Carpenter at.al, 1999). Also, other intuitive strategies were used, as repeated addition of equal sets, or „modeling‟. „Modeling‟ here means, using concrete materials to help the problem solving. Thus, during this case, we concluded that the demonstration of repeated addition with two, with five, with six,… and so on, does not present difficulties if addition operations are excellently acquired. Because, textbooks14 have most of the examples with „calculation‟ it was a routine for students to solve most of them in the same way, using only memorization. However, using only calculation skills and „routine models‟ isn‟t sufficient to understand what the factor and product mean. Even though there were no perceiveable mistakes in the textbook pages „filled‟ by students, it doesn‟t mean that they understand what each of the „numbers‟ represents in the problems that were presented in the Case 2.