I.K. Amalina, Y. Fuad, I.D. Agustina
Understanding concepts of fraction magnitude is necessary and inevitable steps of mastering fractions. One way to assess understanding of fraction magnitude is through magnitude estimation. Every student has different strategies for solving mathematics problem. These strategies show how deep students understanding, especially in estimating fractions. This study examined students' strategies in estimating fractions based on fraction magnitude knowledge. The sample was the students of VIIB class of a school in Surabaya, 20 boys and 8 girls. All students had to complete a diagnostic's test which was the fraction estimation test. There were 9 students with the high ability in estimating fractions, 8 students with medium ability in estimating fraction, and 11 students with low ability in estimating fraction. Three volunteer students with high ability in estimating fraction who had different and interesting strategies were chosen as our respondents. The semi-structured interview was utilized to investigate the process, strategy and students' conceptual of fraction magnitudes. the strategy used by the first and the third students are the concept of equivalence fraction and convert fraction into decimal. Moreover, the strategy used by the second student is applying the concept of part-whole, but he was only fluent in estimating unit fraction. For further study, there is need to categorize the logical stage of students' strategy in estimating fractions. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.
Program Pascasarjana Department of Mathematics, Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Surabaya-East-Java, Indonesia; Sekolah Menengah Pertama Lab, School Universitas Negeri Surabaya, Surabaya-East-Java, Indonesia
