Pupil B Task: A Conceptual Analysis

Mathematics has become a very large part of society today. From the moment children learn the basic principles of math to the day those children become working members of society, everyone has used mathematics at one point in their life. The crucial time for learning mathematics is during the childhood years when the concepts and principles of mathematics can be processed more easily. However, this time in life is also when the point in a person’s life where information has to be broken down to the very basics, as children don’t have an advanced capacity to understand as adults do. Mathematics, an essential subject, must be taught in such a way that children can understand and remember.

Numeracy development is important for all children as maths is an important part of everyday life. The way in which maths is taught has changed greatly over the years. When I was at school we were taught one method to reach one answer. Now, particularly in early primary phase, children are taught different methods to reach an answer, which includes different methods of working out and which also develops their investigation skills. For example, by the time children reach year six, the different methods they would have been taught for addition would be number lines,

Van de Walle, J, Karp, K. S. & Bay-Williams, J. M. (2015). Elementary and Middle School Mathematics Teaching Developmentally. (9th ed.). England: Pearson Education Limited.

This synthesis paper is examining the direct link between counting and building student’s number sense. The study conducted by Baccaglini-Frank and Maracci (2015), number sense as being vital to learning formal mathematics and stated there was a positive correlation between using fingers for counting and representing numbers has a positive effect on number sense. Students need opportunities to practice counting and establish foundational skills in number sense in order to be successful during their mathematical futures. It was determined that touching, moving, and seeing representations are essential components of the mathematical thinking process (Baccaglini-Frank & Maracci, 2015).

I did not think that it would be that difficult for children this age to count by 2’s. I saw that they were using their strategy to solve the total of points that they were gathering. Some were putting two sticks for every point while others were putting the actual number 2 all the way down and adding them as they went. I had a few kids write the numbers by 2’s for example 2, 4, 6, etc…. until they got to 20 points. I had a dotted line with the numbers right beside me but they never once looked at it to see what number came next. What I will do is try to make them count by 5’s or 10’s it would probably be more complex than counting by 2’s. I can provide objects that they can use to count and be able to record the information better.

In this essay I plan to write a reflective and analytical report as to how all children, taking into account their individual needs, can be included successfully in engaging in mathematical activities and enquiries in the daily numeracy hour. I will focus on the issues of providing a curriculum which can be accessed by all learners, the importance of differentiating the content and delivery of mathematics lessons to suit children with different learning styles and abilities, the tensions between inclusive education and the ideals set out in the National Curriculum and National Numeracy

I would explain to students that it is important to count each dot only once and by touching, marking, or moving an item as it is being counted will help the person counting not miss an item or count the same item twice by establishing one-to-one correspondence.

Children acquire mathematics skills and concepts through adult – guided experiences that respect children’s concrete thinking and need to learn through exploration. One such adult-guided experience would be, for example, when children spontaneously use numbers in their play adult makes comments using words and phrases like ‘more’, ‘less’, ‘a lot’, the same as’.

A few students made connections about patterns when they were skip counting and could understand that their number stings of fives or tens are repeated addition. They made flash cards out of long strips of paper for twos, fives and tens.

For this assignment I will describe two theories of mathematical development. I will discuss Jean Piaget’s and Tina Bruce’s theories about how children’s understandings of mathematical develop.

Despite Boris’ declining motivation I decided to continue on with numbers beyond thousands and decimals, where Boris revealed his weakness in place value. Boris was unable to write large numbers, and could not read any numbers into the hundred thousands and beyond. An example was when Boris was asked how many people lived in Canberra (data sheet provided said 308 086), Boris answered “3008”. Also, when asked to write 924 600, Boris wrote 90024600. Booker et al. (2014) states that when working with numbers beyond four digits, children need to have a strong understanding of the place value rule that is ten lots of one number will increase its place value by one place, such as ten lots of 100 is 1000. This will help to gain an understanding of the value of larger numbers and how many digits are within a number (Booker et al., 2014). Reys et al. (2017) mention that it is not uncommon for students to become confused with writing larger numbers, and until children gather a true

Performing poorly in mathematics has dire future outcomes. This is particularly true for students. with math difficulties. “Good numeracy is essential in helping our children learn., As students, understanding information makes sense of statistics and economic news which is essential in today’s society. Decisions in life are often based on numerical information: to make the best choices, we need to be numerate”. Poor numeracy is a problem for students who struggle to use numbers. Numeracy complements literacy and is sometimes called ‘mathematical literacy. Teachers should apply a universal design for learning to mediate the language demands of mathematics. ( Reading & Writing Quarterly, 31(3), 207-234). Communication is exchanging information using symbols, signs, and/or behavior (“Communication,” 2015), to evaluate their peers ' contributions. In their Research in practice book Stars Are Made Of Glass: Children as capable and creative communicators (2010), Leonie Arthur, Felicity McArdle and Marina Papic: and provide valuable definitions by examples of the elements that comprise ‘numeracy’: (p. 7) Spatial understandings include two and three-dimensional shapes, position (under, over), location (near, far) and orientation (turn, roll). (p. 7). Measurement understandings include concepts such as height, length, mass and temperature. (p. 8) Predicting and estimating involve using ‘data’ or information to suggest, for example, which object will be fastest, or which will sink.

Britain over the last twenty years has been that all pupils constantly ‘invent’ rules to

All mathematic teachers have students enrolled in their classes who struggle with basic math skills and suffer from anxiety. This does not make a difference if it is a first-grader or an eleventh-grader, any student can develop math anxiety. Dr. Eugene Geist found in his research that mathematics anxiety seems to occur for the first time in 1st- through 3rd-graders, but it is possible for even preschoolers to develop it (2015, p. 329). While the majority of students who develop math anxiety are the low math ability students, there are other factors that can cause any grade student to develop this anxiety. A teacher who is not specialized in mathematics may not feel confident while teaching the content to their students; this then causes a student to begin developing anxiety. Classroom activities and how a student perceives their math classroom environment can also cause a student to develop anxiety or increase their anxiety (Yanqing, 2016, p. 32). Research by Geist in “The Anti-Anxiety Curriculum: Combating Math Anxiety in the Classroom” (2010) shows that low socioeconomic children often have parents who have less educational background and tend to have a negative attitude about learning mathematics. This negativity is transferred from parent to child and thus hinders their mathematical experience (p. 24).

I observed how Mrs. Terry had separated her 8 students into two groups. One group is of students who have gotten the key concept of the subject right on, while the other group still may need a little help on certain subjects. At the beginning of class they start with learning numbers. The number today was 4. They had learned the number 4 by seeing what the number looks like, how to pronounce the number, and then they traced the number both in the air with their fingers and on paper with a pencil. Then they also demonstrated how to count all the way to 50 by using different physical motions for every group of 10 numbers. After working with the number 4 they moved right along to the letter and color of the day. Today’s letter was P and the color was purple. When learning the letter instead of just identifying it with the name they sounded it out. They used cards with pictures and used the p sound to determine if what was shown in the picture had started with P or not. The students learn their colors by singing color songs and listing different items that are the same color.