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WEEK 3: Reflective Journal

Discuss and reflect on the ‘ingredients’ required in develop a child’s number sense in the pre-primary and early primary years.

Throughout my tutorial we explored the ‘ingredients’ that is required to develop a child’s number sense, we explored the SENA assessment. The SENA assessment requires the students to complete a variety of math solving problems and demonstrates to the teacher the level student is at and how they are solving math problems. Teaching mathematics to early primary students introducing rules and procedures to help engage students from an early age (Linder et al. 2011, para. 5).



Introducing open-ended questions will allow students to explore different possibilities in math problems to widen their learning. It allows students to investigate and develop and discover other outcomes of mathematics. (Mildenhall, 2014), inducted a research on how a pre-primary school teacher engaged her students through the use of various signs that includes, symbols, gesture, language and objects. The teacher introduced three lesson cycles and each one has a hands-on activity. The outcome of these activities have increased in students engagement as the teacher used the semiotic resources of the playful hands on activities, bodily movement and gestures including pointing. This approach allowed students to develop their flexible computational strategies.


As a future teacher I have become more aware of the types of activities I can contribute in my class to allow the students to enhance their knowledge and explored number sense through objects and activities. This will allow me to plan classes more directly to students learning stage that will allow them by the end of the foundation year they are expected to “establish understanding of the language and processes of counting by naming numbers in sequences, initially to and from 20, moving from any starting point (NSW Education Standard Authority, 2020).





References:


Linder, S., Powers-Costello, B., & Stegelin, D. (2011). Mathematics in Early Childhood: Research-Based Rationale and Practical Strategies. Early Childhood Education Journal, 39 (1), 29-37.

Mildenhall, P. (2014). Number sense development in the pre-primary classroom. How is it communicated?. Retrieved from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1093325.pdf NSW, B. (2020). Mathematics K–10 :: Organisation of content. Syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au. Retrieved from http://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/mathematics/mathematics-k10/content-k10/

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