Abstract
A kindergarten teacher's practice was investigated in order to understand her knowledge of her children's mathematical thinking, the ways in which she acquired that knowledge, and the uses she made of that knowledge in making instructional decisions. The focus of the investigation was the teacher's knowledge of her children's thinking about numbers, including counting and addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The teacher had attended Cognitively Guided Instruction workshops at which she had the opportunity to learn about research on children's mathematical thinking. She gathered information on her own children's thinking by posing word problems, listening to children as the described their strategies for solving the problems, and talking to other adults about her children. She used that information to select problems to pose in subsequent lessons.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
Carpenter, T. P., Ansell, E., Franke, M. L., Fennema, E., & Weisbeck, L. (1993). Models of problem solving: A study of kindergarten children's problem-solving processes. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 25, 42-440.
Carpenter, T. P., Fennema, E., Peterson, P. L., & Carey, D. A. (1988). Teachers' pedagogical content knowledge of students' problem solving in elementary arithmetic. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 19, 385-401.
Clark, C. M., & Peterson, P. L. (1986). Teachers' thought processes. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (pp. 255-296). New York: Macmillan.
Fennema, E., Carpenter, T. P., Franke, M. L., Levi, L., Jacobs, V. R., & Empson, S. B. (1996). A longitudinal study of learning to use children's thinking in mathematics instruction. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 27, 403-434.
Goodman, Y. M. (1982). Kidwatching: Evaluating written language development. Australian Journal of Reading, 5(3), 120-128.
Hiebert, J., & Carpenter, T. P. (1992). Learning and teaching with understanding. In D. A. Grouws (Ed.), Handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning (pp. 65-97). New York: Macmillan.
Putnam, R. T., & Leinhardt, G. (1986). Curriculum scripts and the adjustment of content in mathematics lessons. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA.
Smith, D. C., & Neale, D. C. (1989). The construction of subject matter knowledge in primary science teaching. Teaching and Teacher Education, 5, 1-20.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Warfield, J. Teaching Kindergarten Children to Solve Word Problems. Early Childhood Education Journal 28, 161–167 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026591117867
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026591117867