Abstract
<p><strong>Background:</strong> It is important to provide early educational support for children having weak mathematical skills, in order to prevent possible later mathematical learning difficulties. Currently, there is a lack of research-based mathematical intervention programmes for teachers to use.<br /><strong>Aim:</strong> This study investigated the impact of counting skills intervention for Finnish first graders <br />with low performance. In addition, the relations between inductive reasoning, language and <br />mathematical skills were examined.<br /><strong>Setting:</strong> This study applied a quasi-experimental design using control groups.<br /><strong>Methods:</strong> Intervention was provided in small groups 12 times during 8 weeks. The development of intervention children (LOWi, <em>n</em> = 11) was compared to the development of low-performing (LOWc, <em>n</em> = 26) and typically performing (TYPc, <em>n</em> = 114) children.<br /><strong>Results:</strong> The LOWi group made significantly greater gains in their mathematical performance from Time 1 to Time 2, compared with the LOWc and TYPc groups. Children with low performance in mathematical skills showed lower performance also in their inductive reasoning and reading fluency skills than the TYP children.<br /><strong>Conclusion:</strong> A relatively short counting skills intervention that applied explicit teaching showed promising effects in improving low-performing children’s mathematical performance as a supplemental instruction.</p>
Highlights
The performance of children in early mathematical skills varies widely, even before they begin formal schooling (Desoete et al 2009)
Kindergartners and first graders who perform low in mathematics typically have difficulties especially in counting skills, which includes number word sequence, enumeration with concrete objects and knowledge of number symbols (e.g. Toll & Van Luit 2014), going beyond the memorised counting string that can be recited without comprehension of its numerical meaning
Organising educational support in Finland is based on three tiers: general, intensified and special support (Basic Education Act 628/1998, Amendment 642/2010; FNBE 2010), which shares similarities with the Response to Intervention (RtI) approach used in the United States (Björn et al 2015)
Summary
The performance of children in early mathematical skills varies widely, even before they begin formal schooling (Desoete et al 2009). We use the model of Aunio and Räsänen (2015) as it focuses especially on the core numeracy skills that are important from the viewpoint of low-performing children and as it served as a theoretical base for developing our intervention programme. According to this model, the core early mathematical skills for later development are symbolic and non-symbolic number sense (approximate evaluation of magnitudes or symbols representing magnitudes), understanding mathematical relations, counting skills and basic skills in arithmetic (for a detailed description of skills, see Aunio & Räsänen 2015). There is a lack of research-based mathematical intervention programmes for teachers to use
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