Jill Cheeseman

The Mathematical Knowledge and Understanding Young Children Bring to School.

As part of the Victorian Early Numeracy Research Project, over 1400 Victorian children in the first (Preparatory) year of school were assessed in mathematics by their classroom teachers. Using a task-based, one-to-one interview, administered during the first and last month of the school year, a picture emerged of the mathematical knowledge and understanding that young children bring to school, and the changes in this knowledge and understanding during the first year of school. A major feature of this research was that high quality, robust information on young children’s mathematical understanding was collected for so many children. An important finding was that much of what has traditionally formed the mathematics curriculum for the first year of school was already understood clearly by many children on arrival at school. In this article, data on children’s understanding are shared, and some implications for classroom practice are discussed.

Number Sense: The Impact of a Measurement-Focused Program on Young Children’s Number Learning

Children begin to form mathematical concepts at an early age and many of these concepts are linked to measurement experiences. Often mathematics education in pre-school and at the beginning of school is focused on numbers. In order to acknowledge children’s mathematical concepts and to build on them, a mathematics intervention program that focused on measurement replaced the usual mathematics curriculum for 40 children entering their first year of school in Australia. This chapter presents the results of the children’s performance on a one-to-one task-based interview that tested their number knowledge at the beginning and end of the school year. In addition, two case studies and some classroom stories from the intervention are described. Findings indicate that a measurement-based curriculum can stimulate the development of children’s number knowledge and their number sense.