<p>"In elementary school, we teach kids facts and procedures and sometimes we toss in properties. In general, I don’t believe that the terms associative, commutative, distributive, existence, identity and inverse are used but the ideas are. "</p>
<p>I definitely teach the terms and the procedures for commutative, associative, and inverse with my second graders. I can’t speak to all my colleagues but this is in our standards for our grade level.<br>
I think one of the hardest things for me with incoming second graders is getting them to realize that “=” doesn’t mean “this is where you put the answer”. When we work on the commutative property and a problem is simply 8+2 = __ +8, they would want to put 10 in the blank. It’s being 7 years old I know. It is fun to watch when it starts to make sense and how they can play with numbers.
I KNOW many kids do not get a complete understanding of number sense. I get so many parents who will say “I was never good at math either” and just dismiss the subject as a possibility for their kids even in elementary school. I love stretching their mathematical little minds :)</p>