Your Name and Title: Dina Ben Yaish Tahal
School or Organization Name: Kaye Academic College
Co-Presenter Name(s): No
Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Israel
Language in Which You Will Present: English
Target Audience(s): early childhood educators; teacher educators; preservice-teachers
Short Session Description (one line): Encouraging the Use of Formal and Informal Computational Strategies as a Means of Helping Kindergarten Children Develop Number Sense.
Full Session Description (as long as you would like):
Encouraging the Use of Formal and Informal Computational Strategies as a Means of Helping At Risk Kindergarten Children Develop Number Sense
New trends in mathematics teaching and learning at early ages emphasize the importance of helping children develop "number sense", which is described as an intuitive ability that permits flexible thinking, evaluation of numbers and the capacity to operate on them using quantitative, logical judgment.
Formal and Informal Computational strategies include counting, skip-counting, comparing numbers, counting on from the larger or the smaller number, and finding the successor or the predecessor number.
My study is based on the results of the program Rightstart which was aimed at helping low social economical kindergarten children succeed in school (Griffin, Case, Siegler, 1994). The program Rightstart, implemented in different states in the US and Canada, showed how children with a low social economical background and as a result low abilities to succeed in school mathematics were helped to develop "number sense" a critical ability for learning mathematics in school.
My study, examines whether kindergarten children coming from deprived neighborhoods who were encouraged to use formal and informal computational strategies developed number sense.
For the purpose of the study, a series of eight rich, unconventional tasks were designed specifically to encourage the children use the strategies mentioned above.
Sixty eight children from several kindergartens in an economically deprived neighborhood in a middle size town in Southern Israel participated in the study, half being the experimental group and half the control group. The kindergarten children chosen to participate in the study possessed basic knowledge of counting (counting words and counting up to five.)
The data were collected through a series of observations following the intervention and pre and post interviews. The analysis of the data included T- tests on independent groups and on related groups followed by General Linear Model.
The results show that encouraging children's use of computational strategies contributes to the development of number sense. Moreover, children who used computational strategies strengthened their ability to count within an increased range of numbers, were able to operate on a mental number line, and finally, used computational strategies on their own, without external encouragement.
This presentation describes the different tasks focusing on the characteristics that might have contributed to children's development of number sense, stressing the universality of these characteristics which should contribute to a successful beginning of deprived children around the world.
Griffin, S., Case, R., & Siegler, R. (1994). Rightstart: Providing the Central
Conceptual Prerequisites for First Formal Learning in Arithmetic to Students at
Risk for School Failure. In K. Mc Gilly (Ed.), Classroom Lessons: Integration
Cognitive Theory and Classroom Practice (pp.24-49). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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