A Case Study Of Cognitive Strategies For Primary School Mathematics Students

Mathematical low-achievers are those students who have difficulty in learning mathematics,they spend a lot of time and energy to learn mathematics,but they are short of learning ability and learning strategies,and the learning efficiency is low,the learning effect is far less than expected.Cognitive strategy is the cognitive process of learners' learning,including a series of psychological processes such as memorizing,attention and thinking,behavioral manifestations such as transcription,line drawing,etc.are included too,which is a manifestation of learners' cognitive ability.According to the learning strategy theory of Gagne and McCaar,cognitive strategies fall into retelling strategies,finishing strategies,and organizing strategies.Retelling strategies include individual behaviors such as repetition,transcription,and line drawing;finishing strategies include imagination,oral dictating,note-taking and analogy;organizing strategies include individual behaviors such as chunking,selecting points,outlining and drawing relationship diagrams.This study combines cognitive strategies with elementary school mathematical low-achievers.Two methods,absolute evaluation and relative evaluation,were used to select 5 mathematical low-achievers,5 secondary students and 5 excellent students in each class,three classes are selected from X school,S school and J school in H city.Literature method,interview method,observation method,and case-study method are used to analyze the cognitive strategies during the learning process of primary school mathematics.This study shows:1.The cognitive strategies of students with mathematics difficulties are lower than those of secondary and excellent students.They are less positive than secondary and excellent students in the using of retelling strategies,finishing strategies,and organizing strategies.Informations from all three grades show that students with learning difficulties use more retelling strategies,less finishing strategies and least organizing strategies.At the same time,with the growth of grades,the using of finishing strategies and organizing strategies in grade three and grade six is more than that in grade two.2.There are problems in the cognitive strategies of the students with mathematics difficulties in elementary school.The problems in the use of retelling strategies are blindness and impropriety.They use fewer and fewer retelling strategies with the growth of grades;the problems in the using of finishing strategies are unconsciousness,methodological errors and the least use of imagination,analogy,and summary,these students are lack of knowledge to use finishing strategies;the problems in the using of organizing strategies are rarely application,refusal of cooperation and weak cooperative awareness.Therefore,the key to solving the problems of mathematical low-achievers is to strengthen the guidance of learning strategies for students with difficulties in mathematics.First of all,teachers need to enhance the awareness of developing cognitive strategies for students with learning difficulties.Secondly,in the training of retelling strategies,effective preview,timely practice and focused review are needed;in the cultivation of finishing strategies,students with learning difficulties should be encouraged to express in multiple mathematical languages,and guided to use the method of combining whole and part in their learning;in the cultivation of organizing strategies,teachers should guide students to develop good habits of taking notes,self-reflection and self-questioning,introduce old knowledge,guide students to build new knowledge on the base of old knowledge,urge students with learning difficulties to sort out knowledge,develop their ability of extracting key information,direct their organizing strategies through cooperative learning.