Does your child need help in
maths?
Study aims to identify and help slower
learners even before Primary 1 screening
By MATTHIAS CHEW
CAN your pre-school child tell how many eggs there are in the
basket at one glance? Or how many Lego blocks there are in the
box?
If the answer is yes, he may find primary school
maths less of a struggle.
The National Institute of Education (NIE) has
launched a year- long study involving six-year- olds to determine
whether children's ability to estimate the number of objects in a
given set is indicative of their mathematical ability.
The aim is to identify those who may need help
coping with maths - a subject many parents complain is tough - even
before they enter Primary 1.
The ongoing research project, which is expected to
cost $185,000, is led by cognitive psychologists Rebecca Bull,
Kenneth Poon and Kerry Lee.
It involves testing 300 to 400 Kindergarten 2
children for their "approximation skills" by making them do
exercises where they have to estimate the number of objects that
flash for a few seconds on a computer screen.
The children will be picked from a range of
pre-schools. So far, about 180 pre-schoolers have been tested.
The researchers will then compare the results with
how well the test subjects do in a screening exercise all children
have to go through in Primary 1 to gauge their grasp of maths.
While similar studies in the United States and
Britain suggest a positive relationship between approximation
skills and numeracy, this is the first such study focusing on
Singapore pupils, said Dr Bull.
Thus, parents of slow learners can give extra help
to their children earlier, so that primary school maths will be
less of a struggle.
Dr Lee said this type of project is particularly
useful because it focuses on understanding children's cognitive
capabilities, while much of other work looks at tailoring pedagogy
for slower learners.
He said: "By looking at how teaching is done, and
what children bring into the picture, we're looking to tackle the
problem from two perspectives."
The outcome of the NIE project will be known by the
middle of next year, when all the data is collected and
analysed.
Currently, all Primary 1 pupils go through a
screening exercise in January when they enter school, to identify
those whose level of English and maths lags behind their peers.
Those deemed weak in maths - about 5 per cent of
each cohort - attend the Learning Support for Mathematics (LSM)
programme.
Introduced in 2007, the LSM gives extra help to
weak pupils in Primary 1 to help them catch up.
Last month, Education Minister Heng Swee Keat said
that his ministry will build on existing learning support schemes
to "help more learners (and) look into better ways of identifying
students with other special needs".
A ministry spokesman told The Straits Times that it
has previously funded research into learning support and will
"continue to consult NIE" in this area.
Apart from screening tests conducted at
kindergartens, the team will also collect information about whether
the pupils are exposed to numbers-based activities at home, as well
as their socio-economic and language backgrounds.
The researchers will then see if these factors are
linked to whether a child can cope with primary school maths.
After analysing results from about 100 pupils
tested so far, Dr Bull said one preliminary conclusion reached was
that kids who have poorer maths skills are poorer at judging if a
group has fewer or more subjects, and at making estimates.
Another early conclusion, she said, was that
children with parents who said they played more numbers-based games
at home tended to be better at approximation tasks.
"If we find that approximation skills measured in
kindergarten can help to predict which children will need learning
support for maths, we will want to try some form of early
intervention."
That need not take the form of extra enrichment
classes, she added, but can simply involve raising awareness among
parents about informal intervention techniques.
These include everyday activities such as
estimating how much shopping might cost, talking about numbers, and
playing games that require children to recognise numbers and count,
such as dice-based board games.
Said Dr Bull: "The long-term aim of the project is
to have fewer children end up in LSM, and potentially having
children who are more positive about doing mathematics and being
engaged with numerical tasks."
Home, The Straits Times, Monday, October 8 2012, Pg B1