STRATEGIES FOR RESOLUTION OF MENTAL CALCULATIONS AND LEVELS CONSTRUCTION ARITHMETIC OPERATIONS

Abstract

This research examined the strategies for solving mental arithmetic additions and subtractions in students who attended the third and fifth grade on. Furthermore, based on constructivism of Jean Piaget identified levels of construction of the arithmetic operations, in situations involving equalization of quantities and construction of differences (interdependencies between additions and subtractions), which allowed then to examine relationships between the strategies of resolution calculations and levels of construction of the arithmetic operations. The participants in this study were students from state and municipal schools of the city of Toledo-PR, totaling twenty students from third grade and twenty fifth graders. After a qualitative and quantitative data, we could say the correlation between the resolution of mental calculations and levels of construction operations of addition and subtraction. Thus, students who had higher levels of test Piaget, achieved a better score in the resolutions and the use of more elaborate strategies. These results were identified as independent of the number of students and dependents of cognitive levels. Ends with the educational implications of the study that seeks to rescue the importance of mental calculation, a fact not sufficiently appreciated in the curricular proposals in western Paraná.