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Early Steps Count: Teaching Arithmetic to Prepare Students for Algebra

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Slide 3 of 19

Ways of Teaching Subtraction

This is a graph that compares the approaches of American teachers and the approaches of Chinese teachers. The bar graph shows that 83% of American teachers use approaches that involve "borrowing" or "trading" when teaching subtraction compared to just above 10% of the Chinese teachers. It shows that about 13% of the American teachers use "regrouping" or "decomposing" compared to more than 50% of the Chinese teachers. It also shows that about 1/3 of the Chinese teachers used multiple methods while none of the American teachers did this.

Knowing and Teaching; Ma, Liping; cc 1990;
Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Inc.; pg. 8.