Grade 5 children’s drawings for integer addition and subtraction open number sentences

Learner-generated drawings by students with mathematical learning difficulties in finishing open number sentences

“…The use of drawings and their changes represent a potential perspective on drawing development. This shows that students can develop and create different models according to the development of learning (Wessman-Enzinger, 2019).…”

“…This difference is due to students' initial knowledge about completing addition and subtraction operations on integers (Bishop et al, 2018). Meanwhile, differences in student-generated drawings may indeed occur in solving questions in open number sentences which frees up the production of student drawings according to students' completion strategies (Wessman-Enzinger, 2019).…”

“…This suggests that children do not consider integers in the same way. MLD students are freed to produce and construct their drawings as instructional models (Lewis et al, 2020;Wessman-Enzinger, 2019). S1 showed more variety in producing drawings in session two and session three compared to session one in solving the problem of open number sentences.…”

“…Although MLD students do not have good mathematical performance in addition and subtraction operations of integers (Lewis et al, 2020), they can have a good mathematical performance development on the visualization of the resulting drawing (learner-generated drawings) (Schmidgall et al, 2019). This also happens to students who have difficulty operating integers (Wessman-Enzinger, 2019). MLD students provide better problem solving by representing the meaning of operations through learner-generated drawings rather than solving problems only in the form of symbols or writing (Hoogland et al, 2018).…”

Conceptual models for integer addition and subtraction

“…Although research with integers spans decades (e.g., Bell, 1984;Janvier, 1985), explicit scholarly discussion on thinking about integer addition and subtraction has gained momentum recently (e.g., Bishop et al, 2016;Bofferding, 2014;Stephan & Akuyz, 2012;Wessman-Enzinger, 2018) with increased interest in research in student thinking about integers (Lamb et al, 2013), calls for different studies and perspectives on student thinking (Bofferding, Wessman-Enzinger, Gallardo, Salinas, & Peled, 2014;Lamb et al, 2013), and engaging in scholarly discourse across these different perspectives (Bofferding & Wessman-Enzinger, 2015). The descriptions of conceptual models provides a distinct perspective by describing thinking about integer and addition and subtraction as students connect symbolic use of integers (open number sentences) to contexts (posed stories).…”