Research On The Design Of Elementary School Mathematics Theme Units

In the integration process of new curriculum reform and information technology in teaching(based on multimedia and network communication), It is a very common phenomenon that the primary mathematics teaching wandering between the real world and the knowledge-oriented standard. Therefore, in the teaching of primary maths, it is quite necessary to seek the method that system of knowledge is connected to the real world.The paper firstly reviews the theoretical development and practical application cases of theme unit both at home and abroad. It is found that there is certain research foundation of the design process in the unit of subject matter in our country, but less teaching practice in the field of mathematics. On the basis of consideration of the characteristics of the elementary school mathematics course and the law of cognitive development of primary school students, the author takes Dick-Carey's systematic instructional design model as the prototype, designs the framework of the elementary school mathematics subject unit and then analyzes in detail all the elements of the design strategy in the framework with specific examples. This paves the way for forming a theme unit case. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed framework, the author implemented case teaching in Grade 5, Class 1 of Nanjing Xiaohang primary school.The experimental results show that:first, the theme unit case teaching did not cause the decline of students' academic performance. Second, the theme unit case teaching saved the number of teaching hours in the absence of the student's failing grades. Third, although theme unit case teaching didn't improve the students' ability to solve mathematical problems apparently and comprehensively, there was a positive influence on their ability of finding, proposing and analyzing problem. Consequently, they unconsciously had the awareness of using mathematics knowledge to solve the (real) problems. Therefore, the design framework of the elementary school mathematics thematic units which this study proposed is effective. It partly can strengthen the contact between mathematics learning and life experience of the elementary school students, and be helpful to cultivate students' ability to synthetically apply the mathematics knowledge to solve simple practical problem.