Using multiplication and division contexts to build place-value understanding

Abstract

The paper describes a study with five-year-old children to explore how multiplication and division problems helped them to develop early place-value understanding. Two teachers taught a series of focussed lessons over two four-week periods. The children solved problems using familiar materials grouped in twos, fives and tens. By the end of the instructional period, virtually all children knew that two fives make ten; the majority could work with tens. Half of them could add tens and ones, fewer partitioned tens, and few could work with multi-unit processes. We propose a 5-level framework that describes developmental progressions in children's awareness of groups of five and ten as building blocks for place-value understanding.