Tracking Primary Students' Understanding of the Equality Sign

Recent curricular reforms are following the lead of the Standards 2000 and, in diverse ways, integrating some algebraic work into primary school mathematics. Our research aims at producing a tool that will allow researchers to track the development of algebraic thinking in children as they progress through various primary programs. In this paper we will illustrate how we have proceeded and what we have learned in our exploration of one small but widely recognized element of algebraic thinking, a rich understanding of the equal sign. An analysis of questionnaires administered to a kindergarten, a grade three and a grade six class in a Montreal area school allows us to present a wide range of student errors and to suggest some key questions for tracking students' thinking and for comparing them across curricula. [For complete proceedings, see ED489632.]