Six-year-old children's understanding of addition and subtraction

Abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the difficulties Primary school children came across in number work, in particular addition and subtraction. The study focuses mainly on four six-year-old children who were reported by their teachers to be finding difficulties when working out simple computations (e.g. 7 + 3 = 10 and 8 - 5 = 3). I hoped to gauge the pupils' level of understanding in the concepts of addition and subtraction by discussing their general progress with their teacher and going through their written schoolwork. I prepared some activities related to the work covered at school, including a variety of resources and contexts such as manipulatives, real-life situations, pictures etc. Working and discussing with the children helped me find out why they are experiencing such difficulties and how their engagement with the provided resources helped them to tackle the given tasks.