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The Importance Of Multiplicative Thinking

Decent Essays

Multiplicative thinking, fractions and decimals are important aspects of mathematics required for a deep conceptual understanding. The following portfolio will discuss the key ideas of each and the strategies to enable positive teaching. It will highlight certain difficulties and misconceptions that children face and discuss resources and activities to help alleviate these. It will also acknowledge the connections between the areas of mathematics and discuss the need for succinct teaching instead of an isolated approach. Multiplicative Thinking Multiplicative thinking is imperative to a child’s understanding of important mathematical concepts and is seen as the ‘big idea’ in number that links multiple key ideas and strategies (Vergnaud, as cited in Siemon, 2011). Commonly, children have a procedural based view of multiplicative thinking which can hinder progress, as opposed to a more conceptual view which is a far better learning framework (Hurst & Hurrell, 2016). If teachers are to maximise a child’s learning, they must acknowledge this and help children maintain a conceptual understanding of multiplicative thinking and emphasise this much more so than procedural rules. Several key ideas and strategies underpin the success of multiplicative thinking and a greater conceptual understanding. Hurst and Hurrell (2014) explain that children need to be acutely aware of the ten times multiplicative relationship between places and how this effects many aspects of mathematics.

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