Designing and Using Number and Arithmetic Exercises in Grade 4 to Contribute to the Development of Students' Mathematical Communication Competence

Numbers and arithmetic constitute a core content strand in the primary school Mathematics curriculum. In Grade 4, the strand Numbers and Arithmetic includes knowledge of natural numbers and operations with natural numbers, fractions, and operations with fractions. This paper presents research findings and proposes a process for designing and using number and arithmetic exercises in Grade 4 to contribute to the development of students’ mathematical communication competence. In addition, the paper illustrates four examples applying the proposed process to the design and implementation of exercises. Each example corresponds to a different topic within the Numbers and Arithmetic content in Grade 4.