Picture Books as an Impetus for Kindergartners' Mathematical Thinking

Abstract

Although there is evidence that the use of picture books affects young children's achievement scores in mathematics, little is known about the cognitive engagement and, in particular, the mathematical thinking that is evoked when young children are read a picture book. The focus of the case study reported in this article is on the cognitive engagement that is facilitated by the picture books themselves and not on how this engagement is prompted by a reader. The book under investigation, Vijfde zijn [Being Fifth], is a picture book of high literary quality that was not written for the purpose of teaching mathematics. The story is about a doctor's waiting room and touches on backwards counting and spatial orientation only tacitly as part of the narrative. Four 5 year olds were each read the book by one of the authors without any The writing of this article was partly supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). The authors are grateful to the children and their teachers for cooperating in this study. Furthermore, they would like to thank Iris Verbruggen, their colleague at the Freudenthal Institute for Science and Mathematics Education, for testing the coding. Very special thanks go to Petra Scherer, Bielefeld University, Germany, for the enlightening discussions about how to understand the children's utterances and for checking the final coding. The authors also are obliged to Lyn English and the anonymous reviewers of this article. Their critique to two earlier versions of it stimulated the improvement and report of the study considerably. The finishing touch came from Anne Teppo, who helped non-native speakers of English with making the authors' plain writings more sophisticated.

Freudenthal’s Work Continues

“…Our studies (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen and Van den Boogaard 2008;Elia et al 2010) that were set up to investigate children's spontaneous reactions when they are read a picture book, revealed that reading picture books can indeed make children cognitively active and can lead to mathematics-related utterances. In one of the studies (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen and Van den Boogaard 2008) four 5-year-old children were individually read Vijfde zijn [Being Fifth] (Jandl and Junge 2000) without any questioning and probing.…”

“…In addition, we tried to enhance the power of the books and cognitive involvement of the children by having the teachers as a role model of cognitive engagement or as a person who provokes discussion with the children that brings them to mathematical reasoning as well. Therefore, we suggested to the teachers involved in our project that they themselves react to the story and pictures in the picture books by performing behavior such as (a) asking oneself questions, (b) playing dumb, and (c) showing inquiring expressions (see Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen et al 2009;Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen and Elia 2013).…”

Εικονογραφημενο Βιβλιο Με Καταστασεις Επαναλαμβανομενης Μοιρασιας Και Οι Δρασεις Των Νηπιων

“…Πιο συγκεκριμένα, έρευνες (Hong, 1996;Jennings, Jennings, Richey & Dixon-Kraus, 1992;Young-Loveridge, 2004) οι οποίες χρησιμοποίησαν ως αφόρμηση, για τον σχεδιασμό μαθησιακών δραστηριοτήτων, εικονογραφημένο βιβλίο, κατέγραψαν βελτίωση στη μαθηματική επίδοση των μαθητών, αύξηση του ενδιαφέροντός τους για τα μαθηματικά, καθώς και αύξηση της χρήσης μαθηματικού λεξιλογίου στο ελεύθερο παιχνίδι τους. Επιπλέον, έχει φανεί ότι ακόμα και η απλή ανάγνωση εικονογραφημένου βιβλίου στα παιδιά, χωρίς σαφή πρόθεση για διδασκαλία ή παρακίνηση, ενισχύει την εμπλοκή τους στις μαθηματικές έννοιες και διαδικασίες του βιβλίου (Van Den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Van Den Boogaard, 2008). Επίσης, μέσω του εικονογραφημένου βιβλίου μπορεί να παραχθεί ένα μοντέλο, να απεικονιστεί μια έννοια, να τεθεί ένας προβληματισμός, να ενθαρρυνθεί η διερεύνηση (Griffiths & Clyne, 1991).…”

The role of real‐life mathematics instruction on mathematics outcomes in kindergarten

“…Through RLMI, students have the opportunity to learn mathematics concepts both abstractly as well as through real‐life applications. Note that many have argued that there is a necessary sequencing between abstract and real‐life content instruction (Boaler, ; Van den Heuvel‐Panhuizen & Van den Boogaard, ). However, whether there is an effectiveness to a particular sequencing is beyond the scope of this empirical study and impossible to test with this study's data.…”