Description:
<jats:p>This article reports a mathematical conversation with some fourth graders. As part of an NSF-funded curriculum-development project conducted at Education Development Center, we wanted to see how students would think about decimals if their first encounter with them was as “more numbers between the familiar numbers.” Two groups of eight fourth graders were selected in a school serving a predominantly blue-collar semiurban community near Boston. One group was identified as “better than average but not the brightest,” whereas the other was decribed as having “real problems” and “little mathematical ability.” None of the sixteen students had apparently learned anything about decimals before.</jats:p>