According to the authors of "Instead of Teaching Missing Addends", a 1998 article published in Teaching Children Mathematics, it is not necessary to give children formal instruction of missing addends, provided they are given other meaningful opportunities to develop numerical reasoning. This assertion is based upon research drawn from a study of 110 students in five classes of first graders located in two Alabama public schools. The students were never given formal instruction of missing addend problems, …showed first 75 words of 633 total…

…showed last 75 words of 633 total…of them across the curriculum. The constructivist approach of using games and hands-on activities in the classroom is important to me, because I feel that the educational implications of activities such as these provide for a much more meaningful learning experience for children. This article definitely reinforced this belief for me, because it clearly showed the immense advantage the children in this study gained from participating in mathematical games and debates versus traditional textbook instruction.