Abstract:

Pupils in all grades at school in the Czech Republic struggle with solving word problems. Therefore, it is appropriate to start working with preschool children to prepare them for solving word problems. This can be done by teaching them to listen, focus, remember, navigate the narration, select and simplify information from text, formulate a complete sentence, understand a question and know how to answer it. By listening to spoken word, children at nurseries can non-verbally record numbers, retell or dramatize a story, draw an illustration to depict single words or the whole narration. They can also select images that relate to the story, order them chronologically and determine the link between two images (therefore imagine a storyline that converts situation in one image into situation in another one, or directly draw the connecting image).

Several preschool institutions in the Czech Republic took part in an experiment. The aim was to establish to what extent preschool children are prepared for solving word problems later in their school education. 6 tasks were created for this experiment and focused on the following: graphic adaptation of the spoken word in the form of a picture; ability to answer questions relating to a story in a complete sentence; vocabulary cultivation by means of “word snowballing”; improving memory recall by reproducing a short tale; ability to link pieces of information by drawing a connecting picture to two given images; developing the ability to place images in chronological order; finding common features and differences between two pictures. The experiment showed that all children from the given sample correctly drew images based on verbal dictation and found all differences between two pictures. 88% of children correctly reproduced a presented tale and ordered images according to the storyline. Three quarters of children had a good vocabulary and the same number of pupils achieved correct linking of information between two pictures. However, only half of the children were capable of answering given questions in complete sentences. It was therefore concluded that it is necessary for preschool establishments to engage children in activities which stimulate them in a natural way, to learn to understand questions and to answer them in a complete sentence.

Keywords:

Word problems, preschool institutions, solving word problems.