Abstract:

The study seeks to promote mathematical literacy in pre-school education, with the aim of providing mathematical skills through standards.

Mathematical literacy translates into the skills that a child develops in problem solving, relating concepts and content, identifying resolution strategies, communicating with others in an oral and written mathematical language.

The present study focuses on the impact of mathematical patterns with 5-year-old children, seeking to understand what knowledge they have and how can they explore it in practical exercises. It seeks to answer three questions:
1) What is the perception of a 5-year-old about mathematical patterns?;
2) How do they react to the exploration of patterns (repeating and growing patterns)?;
3) What are the difficulties that children encounter in approaching patterns?.

Methodologically, the research is based on a qualitative study, with action research, combining and articulating research techniques such as participant observation, informal conversations with 4 educators of the 5-year-old groups of two educational centers, parents/guardians, and document analysis. The educational strategies focused on the different patterns.

A total of 10 different sessions were applied, which included several repeating pattern tasks based on different objectives, such as pattern recognition and continuation, pattern creation, identification of the intruder in a given pattern, and pattern translation.

The planning of the proposed activities was intended to respond to the achievement of the objectives for the respective intervention. Analysis of the data showed that most of the children were able to continue, complete, and create repetitive patterns. Some of them showed difficulties in growth patterns (not identifying the unit of repetition and the next term) and in the language to explain their reasoning line.

Keywords:

Pre-School Education, Mathematical Literacy, Standards.