Children\'s Mathematics

favourites and, armed with clipboards, they circulated among their friends checking

one another’s preference.

In the two examples below, their layout shows different understanding and each

is appropriate for the individual. The children were free to use any means to record

children’s choices of animal: some chose to write individual names, some wrote

crosses and others used personal marks or tallies.

Bianca, 4:5, was interested in her personal favourites (Figure 9.7a). She wrote her

name in the lower right-hand corner to show that she likes lions best and wrote two

other children’s names nearby, using the only available blank space. For someone

else reading what she’d done, other children’s choices are not clear but Bianca could

recall what they had said.

Tommy, (4:7): Tommy’s layout allows easier reading of the number of responses

for each animal since he decided to leave spaces between each animal and put a cross

representing an individual child’s response, immediately beneath the chosen

animal, (see Figure 9.7b).

Evaluation

At the end of the session we read and discussed the outcome of the information the

children had collected. Because they had chosen their own means of recording their

data, what they had done made good sense to the children. They had used different

ways of representing information, of recording their friends’ choices and of present-

ing layout. Our discussion provided valuable opportunities for constructive criticism

and peer modelling that would provide support for future data handling.

Mathematics and literacy in role-play: the library van

THE MATHEMATICS counting

exploring letter and number symbols and amounts to pay

AGE 4- and 5-year-olds in school

CONTEXT child-initiated role-play

FEATURES play grounded within real experiences

schemas

mathematics, reading and writing within role-play

exploring the way in which adults use writing and mathe-

matical graphics in society

Our class of 4- and 5-year-old children visited one of the city libraries during a school

‘Book Week’. Two weeks later we visited the mobile library van that came to the village,

to change a box of books. The outcome of the second visit was totally unexpected. The

space inside the van was very restricted and made a huge impression on the children:

as they squeezed past each other and reached over to lift books from the shelves, they

were exploring enveloping and enclosing schemas (see Chapter 3). This first-hand expe-

rience of a narrow confined space provided a stimulus for some rich play.

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