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In the previous chapter, we examined the representations, strategies, andproblem-solving schemes used by four second- and third-grade students to build their solution to the shirts and jean problem (which was to determine how many outfits could be formed from three different shirts and two different pairs of jeans and to provide a convincing argument of the solution). In their effort to make sense of the components of the problem and to monitor their work, the students developed various notations to represent the data and illustrated the use of certain strategies. In this chapter, we examine how those students and others in the longitudinal study build on those representations and strategies in their work on some towers problems. (A towers problem involves determining how many towers can be built of a given height from a specified number of colors of Unifix cubes, small plastic cubes that can be stacked together.
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Maher, C.A., Sran, M.K., Yankelewitz, D. (2011). Towers: Schemes, Strategies, and Arguments. In: Maher, C.A., Powell, A.B., Uptegrove, E.B. (eds) Combinatorics and Reasoning. Mathematics Education Library, vol 47. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0615-6_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0615-6_4
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