The Power of Paper-Folding Tasks: Supporting Multiplicative Thinking and Rich Mathematical Discussion.

The article discusses the use of paper folding to build understanding of multiplicative relationships, which is a key goal of mathematics instruction in the upper elementary and middle grades. Multiplicative thinking includes comparing numbers through many processes, multiplication and division, ratio, proportions, stretching and shrinking, magnification, scaling, and splitting. The author explains that students tend to reason additively about multiplicative situations first, and are resistant to changing this approach, so teachers need to provide tasks that help students recognize and reason about multiplicative relationships. Paper folding is presented as a means of addressing both the development of multiplicative thinking and facilitating discussion of mathematical problems.