Number System Knowledge: An Instructional Treatment for Second-Grade Students

• In Event: 34.095 - MTCC Roundtable Session 11
  In Roundtable Session: 34.095-9 - Experiments to Improve Mathematics Teaching and Learning in Pre-K to Grade 2 Classrooms

Abstract

Numerical cognition research identified weaknesses in symbolic number sense as a key to learning difficulties in mathematics. The instructional treatment for this project targeted second-grade students’ number system knowledge (NSK), a symbolic number sense component and predictor of functional numeracy in adolescence. The researchers used a classroom-based mixed-methods design by collecting, analyzing, and mixing quantitative and qualitative data to understand the influences of the instructional treatment on students with low pretest scores. The results of this study suggest that an instructional treatment which provides students opportunities to spatially reason with quantities is beneficial to students’ NSK learning. The results also show that students need a variety of NSK experiences, including activities for spatially understanding numbers’ relations on the number line.

Authors

• Jessica F. Shumway, Utah State University

• Kaitlin Bundock, Utah State University