A Study on the indications to the use of Base Ten Blocks and Green Chips in Mathematics textbooks in Brazil

This paper describes a research aimed at problematizing cases of indication to the use of Base Ten Blocks (BTB) and Green Chips (GC) for the teaching and learning of the Arabic numeral system and of arithmetic operations. The cases analyzed are present in the five collections of Elementary School mathematics textbooks selected by the National Program of Textbook (PNLD), which were the most purchased by the Ministry of Education (MEC) in 2016, to supply the system of public education in Brazil during the triennium 2016-2018. The identified indications were classified in three types, and two of them were particularly problematized for presenting some type of limitation or confusion. Only one of the five collections studied did not present problems regarding manipulatives.