Resumo

BEZUIDENHOUT, Hanrie S.  e  HENNING, Elizabeth. The intersect of early numeracy, vocabulary, executive functions and logical reasoning in Grade R. Pythagoras [online]. 2022, vol.43, n.1, pp.1-8. ISSN 2223-7895.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v43i1.646.

The current quantitative study, a naturalistic field experiment, was conducted in a public primary school in Soweto, Johannesburg, with the objective to examine how children's achievement on four assessments at the beginning of Grade R, namely their numeracy, their mathematics-specific vocabulary, their executive functions, and their logical reasoning capabilities, predicted their performance on a numeracy assessment at the beginning of Grade 1. A purposive intact group of 59 participants was assessed at the beginning of their Grade R year and again when they entered Grade 1. The results of the study indicate that, apart from existing or prior numeracy knowledge at the beginning of Grade R, mathematics-specific vocabulary was the strongest predictor for numeracy attainment at the beginning of Grade 1. We suggest that early grade teachers consider young children's number concept development as a cognitive, developmental psychology phenomenon and that they help learners build a lexicon of mathematics-specific qualifiers in their teaching with words that represent concepts of, among others, space, position, comparison, inclusion, sequence and magnitude.

Palavras-chave : Early numeracy; mathematics-specific vocabulary; number concept development; executive functions; logical reasoning; early grades pedagogy; Grade R.

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