Algebraic thinking of grade 8 students in solving word problems with a spreadsheet

Abstract

This paper describes and discusses the activity of grade 8 students on two word problems, using a spreadsheet. We look at particular uses of the spreadsheet, namely at the students’ representations, as ways of eliciting forms of algebraic thinking involved in solving the problems. We aim to see how the spreadsheet allows the solution of formally impracticable problems at students’ level of algebra knowledge, by making them treatable through the computational logic that is intrinsic to the operating modes of the spreadsheet. The protocols of the problem solving sessions provided ways to describe and interpret the relationships that students established between the variables in the problems and their representations in the spreadsheet.