ABSTRACT
It is not uncommon, sometimes even for high school students, to confuse a negative number with its positive counterpart. Such mistakes can be traced back to as early as first or second grade, when children are learning simple subtraction facts. This is what Jane did in her classroom one day. In subtraction, which number gets subtracted from which number depends on their relative positions. It does not have anything to do with their magnitudes. This chapter examines the detrimental effect this mistake may have on children's learning. Regrouping implies that the components of the number are being rearranged so as to execute an operation, such as addition or subtraction. When Jane is now teaching subtraction problems such as 36 - 19 where the digit in the minuend is smaller, she would make sure to say regrouping in place of borrowing.
