Picture Books as an Impetus for Kindergartners' Mathematical Thinking

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 questioning or probing. The reading sessions took place in school, outside the classroom. A detailed coding framework was developed for analyzing the children's utterances that provided an in-depth picture of the children's spontaneous cognitive engagement. Surprisingly, almost half the utterances were mathematics-related. The findings of the study support the idea that reading children picture books without explicit instruction or prompting has large potential for mathematically engaging children.

[1]  Henk Blok.  Reading to young children in educational settings : A meta-analysis of recent research , 1999 .

[2]  Anselm L. Strauss,et al.  Basics of qualitative research : techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory , 1998 .

[3]  G. Leder.  Mathematics before formal schooling , 1992 .

[4]  Clara M. Jennings,et al.  Increasing interest and achievement in mathematics through children's literature , 1992 .

[5]  M. Cole.  Cognitive Consequences of Formal and Informal Education , 2008 .

[6]  P. Cobb.  Where Is the Mind? Constructivist and Sociocultural Perspectives on Mathematical Development , 1994 .

[7]  D. C. Phillips.  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Many Faces of Constructivism , 1995 .

[8]  W. J. Thomas Mitchell,et al.  Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation , 1994 .

[9]  A. Collins,et al.  Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning , 1989 .

[10]  Michael Schiro,et al.  Integrating Children's Literature and Mathematics in the Classroom: Children As Meaning Makers, Problem Solvers, and Literary Critics , 1996 .

[11]  Ann M. Anderson,et al.  Supporting multiple literacies: Parents’ and children’s mathematical talk within storybook reading , 2005 .

[12]  Ann M. Anderson,et al.  Diversity in Parental Storybook Reading , 1997 .

[13]  Haekyung Hong,et al.  Effects of mathematics learning through children's literature on math achievement and dispositional outcomes , 1996 .

[14]  John Mason,et al.  Learning Mathematics through Conversation: Is It as Good as They Say?. , 1998 .

[15]  H. Steinbring.  Die Verwendung strukturierter Diagramme im Arithmetikunterricht der Grundschule , 2009 .

[16]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[17]  Sara Meadows,et al.  Young children's spontaneous participation during classroom book reading: differences according to various types of books , 2005 .

[18]  Susan Ryan,et al.  Developing reasoning skills , 1996 .

[19]  S. Murphy.  Children's Books about Math: Trade Books That Teach. , 2000 .

[20]  A. Strauss,et al.  The discovery of grounded theory : strategies for qualitativeresearch [Glaser, 1968] , 1968 .

[21]  Dale Taylor,et al.  Math Through Children's Literature: Making the NCTM Standards Come Alive , 1993 .

[22]  M. Cole,et al.  Cognitive Consequences of Formal and Informal Education: New accommodations are needed between school-based learning and learning experiences of everyday life. , 1973, Science.

[23]  Thomas A. Romberg.  How One Comes to Know: Models and Theories of the Learning of Mathematics , 1993 .

[24]  K. Fletcher,et al.  Responsiveness and attention during picture‐book reading in 18‐month‐old to 24‐month‐old toddlers at risk , 2005 .

[25]  J. McCarthy,et al.  Turning Adolescents onto Mathematics through Literature. , 1998 .

[26]  D. O'Neill,et al.  Preschool Children’s Narratives and Performance on the Peabody Individualized Achievement Test – Revised: Evidence of a Relation between Early Narrative and Later Mathematical Ability , 2004 .

[27]  David L. Haury.  Literature-Based Mathematics in Elementary School. ERIC Digest. , 2001 .

[28]  Young American and Chinese Children's Everyday Mathematical Activity , 2003 .

[29]  Rosamond Welchman-Tischler,et al.  How to Use Children's Literature to Teach Mathematics , 1992 .

[30]  Margaret C. Donaldson.  Children's Minds , 1978 .

[31]  H. Ginsburg,et al.  Mathematics in Children's Thinking , 1999 .

[32]  Daniel J. McGrath,et al.  Student Content Engagement as a Construct for the Measurement of Effective Classroom Instruction and Teacher Knowledge , 2005 .

[33]  A. Strauss,et al.  The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research aldine de gruyter , 1968 .

[34]  Jennifer Young-Loveridge,et al.  Effects on early numeracy of a program using number books and games , 2004 .

[35]  Ann M. Anderson,et al.  Families and mathematics: A study of parent-child interactions , 1997 .