The Effect of Teaching Number Sense on Decreasing Mathematics Difficulties of First Grade Students

The purpose of the present study was investigating the effect of teaching number sense on decreasing mathematics difficulties of first grade students in Tehran. The population of this study included all students with and without math problems in the first grade of primary school located in the children's care centers of Tehran province in the academic year of 2008-2009. The sample consisted of 16 male students with mathematics difficulties who were selected from child care centers through targeted selection and randomly assigned to two groups, experimental and control. The experimental group was thought in 2 or 3 groups for 26 sessions for 45 minutes to 1 hour during 8 weeks and for control group, some sessions were conducted in accordance with components thought for experimental group but through traditional methods. Data was gathered using Key Math Test, The Number Sense Brief Test and Ravin Test and the data were analyzed using covariance analysis (ANOVA) and multivariate covariance analysis (MANCOVA). The results showed that teaching number sense decreases mathematics difficulties. Furthermore, the experimental group's grades in the understanding and operation components were significantly higher than the control group. As a result, understanding the number has increased the student's mathematical scores in understanding and operation. Fostering math teachers at pre-service and in-service courses is one of the examples for functional application of this study.