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In students early problem solving in maths, using a calculator doesn't help students answer word problems, as students will not be confident which operation will be the correct one, and the very act of working through a method without a calculator can help students firmly establish the correct operation. In timely practice we ensure students meet many problems where they have to decide, "which operation should I use?". In blocked maths teaching (see retrieval practice or spaced learning in a nutshell), students can more easily decide which operation to use by the learning objectives of the lesson or the chapter title in the text book, and which numbers to use by finding the two numbers in the question. So in blocked teaching, students are not likely to be building up a repertoire of situations to match with the 4 operations.
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So if a student has used a calculator and shown the calculations and answers they have found, then when feedback is required, a more meaningful conversation between teacher and student is possible. Teachers will have available in their repertoire of questions not just "what do you think you could work out first to help you answer this question" but also "what have you worked out here?" or "I can see you have worked out the number of ... how can you use this to help answer the final question" or when the student is coming close to mastery "I can see you have worked out .... and you have said ... doesn't have enough, but what were you comparing to know that ... doesnthat Mia does(n't) have enough? ... how could you write that down?"
Our word problems which involve more than one stage of problem solving our found in how much ? enough ? no calc - pdfNC and how much ? enough ? calc - pdfCALC strands. In most circumstances teachers would expect students to master the calculator skill before the corresponding no calculator skill.
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