The integer abacus: to help students in understanding of negative numbers and operations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/1981-1322.2016v11n1p74Abstract
In order to assist students in understanding the negative numbers and their operations, this article reports the experience developed with 38 students of the 7th year of elementary school at a public school in the state of São Paulo, using the "abacus of integers". We seek to detail the accomplished route, which was divided into four stages: the construction of the abacus, learning of its handling and the completion of the addition subtraction and multiplication operations. Experience indicated that students could understand the meaning of negative numbers in visual situations, providing contact with content that is considered more traditional (whole numbers and signs rules) in a more pleasant way. Also they could be perceived evidence that students understand the rules of calculation with integers by observing the regularities, being able to perform more significantly the operations.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors hold the copyright and grant the journal the right for their articles' first publication, being their works simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which allows the sharing of such works with its authorship acknowledged and its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are allowed to enter into separate additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or as a book chapter, with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal).