It is difficult to produce the individual answers and the insights that they were providing. But, let's look at some broad patterns that we found, which are similar to those that others have observed. These are:
i) The number of questions correct1y solved was proportionately much larger where they were written vertically rather than where they were written horizontally.
ii) The questions that did not involve carry-over or borrowing had a much larger percentage of success for the children.
iii) Some children, while writing down problems or copying them from the board, shifted the places of the digits. As a result, they got unusually high answers. They were, however, completely unperturbed by this since the answers didn't seem strange to them. Therefore, the wrong answers had not got them to reflect on their method of solving the sum.
You may like to add to these observations after doing the following exercise.
1) Set a question paper of addition and subtraction problems involving two digit numerals, for children of Class 4 or: 5 around you. Some should be written horizontally and some vertically. Ensure that the children don't talk to each other or copy from each others books.
a) Analyse the answers according to the observations mentioned above.
You may like to add to those observations.
b) Look carefully at the answer sheets of children who have made mistakes. Do you see a pattern in these mistakes ?
c) Talk to the children to find out how many of the mistakes are related to lack of confidence in their grasp of H T 0.