The purpose of this study was to examine how math activities through storytelling affected the mathematical problem-solving and language ability of young children. And the result of this research offer educational application and effective teaching me...
The purpose of this study was to examine how math activities through storytelling affected the mathematical problem-solving and language ability of young children. And the result of this research offer educational application and effective teaching method of math activities by storytelling to early childhood school.
The research questions were posed as follows:
1. How effect do math activities by storytelling have on the mathematical problem-solving skills of preschoolers?
2. How effect do math activities by storytelling have on the language ability of preschoolers?
The subjects in this study were 40 young children at two different classes of a kindergarten in the city of G. The two classes were randomly selected as an experimental group and a control group, which included 20 young children respectively. When both groups took a pretest in mathematical problem-solving skills, language ability and mean age, there were no significant intergroup gaps, there for the two groups were considered equivalent. The experimental group was engaged in math activities by using storytelling 20 times for five weeks, four times a week, from June 7 through July 7, 2005, based on the life themes of the 6th national kindergarten curricula. The control group received typical math education during the same period of time.
The instrument used to assess their math problem-solving skills was Kim Hyeon-ju(2000)'s inventory that was grounded in the Ministry of Education's 5th and 6th kindergarten curricula(1994) and math curriculum model development criteria for young children of three, four and five year old. All the segments of this instrument were grouped by this researcher into four areas. The language ability of the young children was evaluated by the language section of Korean-Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, or K-WPPSI, which was translated by Park Hye-ju, Gwak Geum-ju and Park Gwang-bae(1996). After pretest and postest were conducted, the collected data were analyzed with SAS program, and t-test was implemented to make a comparative analysis.
The brief findings of the study were as follows:
First, when the experimental and control groups were compared to define the effects of the math activities by storytelling on the mathematical problem-solving skills of the young children, the experimental group that participated in those activities made a more significant improvement in mathematical problem-solving skills than the control group that was involved in the typical math activities. Among the subareas of math problem-solving skills, the experimental group made significantly better progress than the control group in classifying, arranging and the basic conception of number. The former scored better than the latter in the basic conception of space and statistics-related experience, but their gap wasn't statistically significant.
Second, as for the effects of the math activities through storytelling on the verbal ability of the young children, the experimental group that was involved in the math activities by using fairy tales made a significantly better improvement in verbal ability than the control group that wasn't. By subarea, the experimental group made significantly higher strides than the control group in common sense, understanding, arithmetics, vocabulary and common characteristics. The former scored better than the latter in sentence, one of verbal ability subareas, but the gap between the two was statistically insignificant.
The above-mentioned findings of the study suggested that the math activities through storytelling had a better effect on fostering the mathematical problem-solving skills and language ability of the young children than the typical math activities. Accordingly, the math activities based on storytelling, which were developed in the study, were expected to be applicable as one of efficient teaching-learning methods to boost the mathematical problem-solving skills and verbal ability of preschoolers.