Journal of the Mathematics Council of the Alberta Teachers’ Association
Volume 46 Issue 1, December 2008
27 – 32
A Grade 4 Adventure with Multiplication on the Chinese Abacus
Jerry Ameis
An arithmetic algorithm or procedure is a series of steps performed to obtain an answer to an arithmetic task. Currently, there is a shift towards teaching early- and middle-years students the reasoning involved in an algorithm. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM 2000) supports this shift: “Fluency refers to having efficient, accurate, and generalizable methods (algorithms) for computing that are based on well-understood properties and number relationships” (p 144). Why does the algorithm produce a correct result? What properties are involved?
