This paper analyzes the performance and strategies for students of 3rd and 5th grades of elementary school in solving of multiplicative conceptual field situations, classifying the level of reasoning employed by these students whilst they were dealing with them. The study, was based on the theoretical ideas of Vergnaud, consisted of a test, composed by 13 questions, applied in 349 students from a public school, sited in São Paulo. Regarding this paper, the discussion will be centered on two questions: one related to the idea of correspondence one to one and another focused on correspondence many to many. The results show a limited evolution regarding students' performance from 3 to 5 to deal with multiplicative problems. Considering only the many to many problem, this development fails drastically. From the perpective of strategies, 5th grade students focused on multiplication mainly, whereas the 3rd grade ones on addition.
Multiplicative structure; Primary school; Reasoning
