Effects Of Adaptive Number Sense Intervention And Reading Intervention On Mathematical Ability In Second-grade Children

Mathematical ability occupies a very important position in one's daily life,which has been well rationalized.The mathematical performance in the school-age can predict individuals' future academic performance.Therefore,more and more researchers begin to explore how to improve people's mathematical ability,and among which the number sense intervention is the research hot spot.Number sense ability refers to a system with which individuals can represent imprecise,approximate quantities without verbal counting.The representations of this system become increasingly imprecise with increasing magnitude,and we can also call it the approximate number system(ANS).The positive relationships between the number sense and mathematical achievements have been hotly debated and extensively investigated both concurrently and longitudinally.Furthermore,the intervention researches also support the causal relationship between the number sense ability and mathematical achievements.However,the past intervention researches did not take the individuals' difference into account.That is to say,all participants accepted the same training from cover to cover,while the present study considered children's different mathematical level when they were trained.This research is divided into two studies,and the study 1 aimed at exploring the effect of adaptive number sense intervention on the mathematical ability in the second-grade children,and whether the training effect of adaptive number sense intervention will different with the different mathematical levels.Beyond the number sense,the reading ability is also significantly associated with individuals' mathematical performance.Reading,as a senior cognitive ability for human,is the necessary method to carry on the lifelong study,to obtain the spiritual happinessand to promote the progress of human civilization.Reading itself is a complex cognitive ability containing a variety of cognitive skills and multilevel cognitive processing,such as words recognition,spelling and reading comprehension,etc..With a view to the importance of reading and mathematics,a growing body of studies begin to investigate the relationship between the reading ability and the mathematical ability.In addition to the researches showing the significant positive correlation between the reading and mathematical ability,there are also some intervention studies to show the casual relations between them.Although extensive evidence has supported the relation of reading and mathematical achievements,an emerging body of research suggests different conclusions.With different training content,studies will have diverse conclusions which means there is a difference in terms of improving math ability.Moreover,because different studies adopt various mathematical tasks in the pretest and post-test,it appeared that different researches have different results regarding to the mathematical improvement aspects,which will also make the inconsistent conclusions.In the next place,past researches in the reading training did not distinguish the reading content in the intervention.It remains a question that whether training general reading content can improve children's mathematical ability or training the reading content specific to the math can be helpful for the mathematical performance improvement.Therefore,study 2 allocated participants into three groups which were mathematical language group,general reading group and the control group.The purpose of this study was to explore the effect of different reading contents intervention on the mathematical ability in the second-grade children,and whether the training effect of reading intervention will different with the different mathematical levels.The purpose of study 1 was to explore effects of adaptive number sense intervention on the mathematical ability in the second-grade children by using the design of pretest and post-test experiment.In the current study,90 students(mean age =7.89)were randomly allocated to two groups.The treatment group performed the non-symbolic comparison task twice a week which was to train number sense,while the control group doing nothing.After one month,the adaptive number sense intervention improves their precision of number sense,as well as their mathematical performance.In addition,as for the training effect,there is a significant difference between children of different mathematical levels.That is to say,the best fit for the adaptive number sense intervention is students with medium or poor in the mathematical performance.The study 2 was aimed at exploring the effects of reading intervention on themathematical ability in the second-grade children by using the design of pretest and post-test experiment.In the present study,134 students(mean age = 7.76)were randomly allocated to three groups which were mathematical language group,general reading group and the control group.The treatment group attended the reading classes twice a week which was to train reading ability,while the control group doing nothing.After one month,the reading intervention improves their mathematical performance,but not their reading ability.As for the training effect,there is a significant difference between children of different mathematical levels.Specifically speaking,the mathematical language intervention is best for poor students while the general reading intervention suit medium or poor students best,which means students with poor mathematical performance and medium performance enhanced most.In addition,the conclusion we drawn from study 1 and study 2 is both the adaptive number sense intervention and the reading training can be beneficial to children's mathematical performance.However,compared with the adaptive number sense intervention,the training effect on the mathematical performance of the reading intervention gets the better results.By using the strict design of pretest and post-test experiment,the present research discussed two methods to improve children's mathematical performance,indicating that the adaptive number sense intervention has an active effect on the children's mathematical performance,the reading intervention no matter the mathematical language training or the general reading training is beneficial to the improvement of mathematical achievements.As for the training effect,there is a significant difference between children of different mathematical levels both in the adaptive number sense intervention experiment and the reading intervention experiment.The conclusions of current research have both theoretical and practical significance.In terms of theory,the current research increases the quantity of relevant empirical studies,and proved the important role of adaptive number sense intervention and reading intervention to the children's mathematical improvement.The conclusions of present research may provide valid theory support for domestic and foreign researchers to study further and the reading intervention may fill the blank of domestic empirical research.In the practical aspect,these conclusions enlightenment teacher to design more targeted and diversified ways according to children's aptitude to promote the development of their mathematics in the future education and intervention process.Parents and teachers should get rid of the exam-oriented education which is depended on books in theprocess of students' mathematical learning.Math learning is a process in which parents,teachers,and students work together.Teachers need to pay attention to provide a rich learning environment and teach through lively activities,and parents try their best to guide students to enrich their learning forms.In this way,students can learn mathematics from entertainment and really enjoy math.