The Math Is Everywhere' Preschool Mathematics …

1 Jennifer Dobbs, Greta L. Doctoroff, and Paige H. FisherThe " math Is Everywhere' Preschool MathematicsCurriculumuring a circle-time discussion of familypets, the teacher asks all children who havea cat to stand up. Dominique volunteers tocount the children. She exclaims, "One, two,three, four, five. Five kids have cats! I bet morekids have dogs." Her teacher responds, "Well,how would we figure that out?" The class has, been using " math Is everywhere ," a flexi-ble, activity-based curriculum designedto help Preschool teachers integrate math -ematics into their teaching. This curricu-lum has been shown to increase children'sachievement and interest in Mathematics (seeArnold et al.)

2 2002).In developing this curriculum , wel<> discovered that many teachers were/ l = t uncertain of how to teach Mathematics topreschoolers. Moreover, some teachers werenot convinced that their students were capa-ble of learning or even interested in mathe-matical concepts. Through workshop discus-sions, teachers realized that they already weredoing activities relevant to Mathematics and thatthey could improve the effectiveness of these activ-ities with simple strategies to maximize children' that are helpful for teaching inJennifer Doobbs, for her in clinical psychologyat the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

3 She is interested in the relationship betweenyoung children's mental health and academic achievement Greta Doctoro ff, is a graduate student in clinical psychology at the University of Massachusetts inAmherst. She is interested in children's academic and mental health factorsrelated to risk and resilience. Paige Fisher, a elinical psychologygraduate student, currently interns at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. She is interested in therelationship between academic development and behavioral problem&BEdited by Julie Sarna, jsarama@buffalo edu, and Douglas Clements, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260.

4 This department addressesthe early childhood teacher's need to support young children 's emerging Mathematics under-standings and skills in a context that conforms with currentknowledge about the waythatchil-dren in prekinrdergarten and kindergarten learn Mathematics . Readers are encouraged to sendmanuscripts fort his section to "Early Childhood Corner," NCTM, 1906 Association Dr., Reston,VA 20191-1bQ 50 ZThis year, "Early Comrer" continues its focus on early childhood curriculum . It is thepolicy of NCTM to not endorse any programs. We present these articles for information are important for promoting mathematicalconcepts and processes.

5 Teachers should use spe-cific, immediate, enthusiastic praise to show chil-dren what they are doing right. Praise makes chil-dren feel successful and promotes thedevelopment of positive feelings about their capa-bilities. Both children's beliefs about their self-efficacy and teachers' positive expectations fortheir achievement are important predictors of aca-demic success. Teachers should praise correctresponses, effort, enthusiasm, interest, problemsolving, creativity, and appropriate behavior, andhelp children problem solve when their responsesare useful strategies include teaching mathe-matics in a way that is relevant to the child andintegrated into the everyday activities of the class-room, making activities fun, and following thechild's lead.

6 Opportunities to help children buildinterest and abilities in Mathematics are every-where in the Preschool classroom; for example,table setting or sharing materials. To the surpriseof many adults, children start school with a largeamount of informal knowledge about mathemat-ics, tend to be active in their leaming, and are nat-urally curious about mathematical concepts(Baroody and Wilkins 1999). Teachers must rec-ognize where children are on a continuum ofmathematical learning and use that knowledge toprovide appropriate scaffolding for should give children opportunities to useproblem-solving strategies, to engage in reason-ing.

7 And to learn new ways to represent informa-tion. Activity choices within the curriculumshould focus on expanding children's knowledge,abilities, and interest. -The goal of our project was to design a curricu-lum of simple, fun, and developmentally appropri-ate activities to promote Preschool children'semergent Mathematics ideas and skills. The activ-ities needed to be "teacher-friendly," requiring lit-tle preparation and fitting easily into the classroomroutine. We hoped that teachers would have funwith the curriculum , feel more confident in theirTeaching Children Mathematics / September 2003abilities to teach Mathematics , and continue tofocus on teaching Mathematics , even after com-pletion of the curriculum consisted of a book of eighty-five Mathematics activities, from which teacherscould select those best suited to their teachingstyles and their children's interests and needs.

8 Weencouraged teachers to adapt the activities or cre-ate similar activities appropriate for their the first three weeks of the program, weasked teachers to implement at least one circle-time activity each day. During the second threeweeks, the teachers implemented two transition ormeal-time activities and one small-group activityper activities included music, movement, dis-cussion, and art projects. They were designed tohold children's interest while teaching numeracyconcepts such as counting, one-to-one correspon-dence, comparison, and understanding of numbersand quantity. This curriculum focuses on promot-ing numeracy achievement within a short timeperiod, so we did not include some concepts rele-vant to Preschool Mathematics , such as geometryand spatial relationships and measurement.

9 Year-long curricula should include these areas. Ourresearch group generated some activities and webased others on previously published curricula(see Arnold et al. 2002 for a more detailed list ofactivities and sources). Figure 1 describes conducted implementation and testing ofthe curriculum in two urban Head Start preschoolcenters. Four of the participating classroomsimplemented the curriculum and four classroomswere control classrooms. A total of one hundredtwelve children ranging in age from three to fiveyears old, with an average age of four, participatedin the gave each child a standardized test of emer-gent Mathematics concepts and processes (TEMA-2) and an assessment of his or her interest in math -ematics activities.

10 Teachers completed surveysabout children's interest in Mathematics activitiesand their own attitudes toward teaching mathemat-ics: After teachers were trained to use the curricu-lum, they implemented the program for six weekswhile tracking and rating their use of the variousmathematics activities in the classroom. Werepeated each assessment after the the intervention, the children's averageraw score on the TEMA-2 was , the twenty-third percentile nationally. After the six-weekintervention, the children who participated in theintervention improved their TEMA-2 scores points; children not exposed to the curricu-lum improved by only points.