Understanding a Child's Development of Number Sense

Introduction

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Conclusion

Conclusion, Reflection and Discussion

• Do you think the children would have done better if the place value interview question had used numbers above twenty instead of numbers in the teens? In English, teen numbers are especially difficult. Compare Asian languages, in which 13 is pronounced, "one ten and three," to the English word "thirteen." It is not clear how "three" and "thirteen" connect.
  
  
• Do you think it was "fair" that the children were not all asked the same questions in the same way? Can we fully probe a young child's understanding without the type of freedom that a clinical interview such as these provides?
  
  
• Interviewers must be sensitive to how children interpret requests such as "represent the '1'." Might a child be confused unless this is carefully crafted to ensure the child knows the interviewer means "the part of the initial teen number that the '1' represents"?
  
  
• Would you agree that basing an assessment of a child's understanding with just standard curriculum tasks is inadequate? How might such tasks be altered so that teachers can observe individual children in the context of classroom work?

References and Credits