What is the best way to help children succeed in math? This subject, feared and sometimes hated by many, can also be learned by playing and children who do it learn more easily.
Don't store avocado like this: it's dangerousWhat is the best way to help children to be successful in mathematics? This subject, feared and sometimes hated by many, can also be learned playing and children who do learn more easily.
To reveal it is a new one study, conducted by researchers at Harvard University, New York University and MIT, according to which some preschool activities can help children develop cognitive skills.
The study, based on an experiment conducted in Delhi, India, engaged i preschool children, that is, up to 5 years old, in a series of math games to help them grasp i concepts of numero and la geometry. It was also about "social" games that allowed interaction between children, helping them to collaborate and learn together: activities such as reading the numbers on the cards and ordering them in order are enough to favor the knowledge of arithmetic and geometry in children.
The results revealed that early childhood education interventions can help poorer children have access to the same educational concepts as economically more privileged children.
Games, an expert in cognitive development, explains that at about 5 years of age children “pass from knowledge in the common sense, spontaneous, to school knowledge, where they have to deal with formal, more theoretical skills and themes.
It is a transition which can turn out to be a lot challenging for children living in poverty, whose parents did not have any schooling.
To get to the bottom of the problem, the researchers developed a field experiment which involved 1.540 children, with an average age of 5 and enrolled in 214 Indian schools.
One third of the children were given gods mathematical games in groups, exposing them to the concepts of number and geometry. One of these consisted in making the little ones count the numbers on the playing cards and order them according to the numbers.
Other children played games based on content social, in which they were encouraged, for example, to estimate the intensity of emotional expressions on cards and to order cards on the basis of emotions. All simple and fun activities.
The third group of children did not play no game but was used as a control group.
The researchers followed the abilities of the children in all three groups, immediately after the surgery, and also 6 and 12 months later. They found that even after the first year of elementary school, the children in the first group who had played the math games better mastered the skills the games were designed for than the children in the other groups.
Not only. The children who played the social games did not benefit from math skills as the effects of the games were specific to their math content.
According to the researchers, math games had produced persistent proficiency in children's math skills.
"It is clear that there is a significant improvement in the mathematical skills used in games", says Esther Duflo, co-author of the study for MIT.
READ also:
- MONTESSORI METHOD: HOW TO BUILD THE TABLES TO LEARN MATHEMATICS
- MATHEMATICAL MIND: CHARACTERISTICS AND HOW TO DEVELOP IT (ACCORDING TO MARIA MONTESSORI)
Also Maria Montessori he supported him, for this he had developed methods to help children ad learn math, to count and to perform the operations of addition and subtraction, division and multiplication. All solutions that stimulate the logical ability thanks to the game.
Francesca Mancuso
