Mathematics, along with reading and writing, is one of the three main content areas that elementary school students are
expected to master during the elementary grades.Hence, the reading, writing, and interpreting
of mathematical symbols can cause confusion for third graders who are struggling to understand new and abstract
concepts relating to numbers and operations.To compound the difficulty of teaching mathematics, accountability pressures teachers to ensure students score well on
evaluation instruments.Operations are performed in different ways for different formulas.Symbols represent operations.