Abstract:

Children stories are part of the preschool or primary school children’ life, pupils of this age like to listen or read them. Teaching mathematics with stories is an attractive method, and it could be also effective when using a well-selected story and integrated it methodologically correctly in the teaching/learning process. Thus, two important questions are arisen: how to evaluate a mathematical story to decide which one to select, and how to integrate the story in the lesson plan. This paper touches the first question focusing on an evaluation scale of mathematical stories. Furthermore, it seems, that the main obstacle of using mathematical stories in the classroom is the lack of the adequate stories for different topics, especially in some languages. Thus, it is important for a preschool or primary school teacher to be able to write a mathematical story for her/his class.

The aim of the research presented in this paper is to evaluate the mathematical stories written by second year Primary and Preschool Pedagogy specialization students. The stories are evaluated from both literary and mathematical point of view using an adaptation of Hunsader’s evaluation scale. The scores given for literacy and mathematical quality are compared to see if there is any correlation between these two aspects, i.e., students who write better stories from literacy point of view are also integrate more efficiently mathematics in their stories. Beside the calculated scores qualitative analysis is also performed, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses from both literacy and mathematical point of view.

Keywords:

Mathematical stories, pre-service preschool teachers, pre-service primary school teacher, evaluation criteria.