Abstract

The intention of the present study is to know how students’ performance on number sense based on the components of number sense and also the sub-components in it. The participants of the study are 80 six graders (12-13 year-old) from three different schools that represent the city, rural, and small town areas. The data were collected using the test. The data analysis showed that the elementary school students’ performance on number sense was still weak on the component of understanding the meaning and concept of numbers. This could be seen in 23.53% respondent. The highest average was 49.75% in understanding the meaning and effect of operation. Nevertheless, the students’ responses indicated that most of those were more dominated by the written algorithms in solving problems. This was also happened on the component of applying knowledge and number sense and operation in computational situation. The students found some difficulties in understanding the meaning and concept of numbers, especially on the domain of fraction and decimal. There were some obstacles the students had, such as misconception about the density of fraction and decimals, about the concept of the part of fraction, and some errors when doing the computation because they paid more attention to the rules and algorithms they understood.

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