Abstract:

Stories are useful educational tools in preschool for the development of the child in different domains, also Mathematics.

The aim of the paper is to present a research done with second year Primary and Preschool Pedagogy specialization students during the ‘Methodology of teaching mathematics in preschool and primary school’ course. Students were asked to write a story for preschool pupils which could be used for mathematics education purposes. They had to present the story in form of a book. The design and the realization technique was freely chosen by the students. In the end of the course they were asked to present their books and to fill in a short questionnaire related with the realization and use of the children stories with mathematical content. 43 student made a storybook and 29 students filled in the questionnaire. The story books were analyzed based on criteria system developed by the researcher. The main questions studied were: how the story is designed as regarding text and illustrations, which mathematical topics are addressed by the stories, which mathematical notions they include, is the mathematical notion a character of the story, is the book facilitate the readers involvement. The questionnaire was designed to find answers to the following questions: do students consider use of children stories for mathematical education purposes useful, do they know any story with mathematical content, do they find difficult to write the story, do they enjoyed to make the storybook. The answers were quantitatively analyzed.

The results shows that most of the students developed an attractive design for their story book with illustrations. In all stories appears at least one mathematical notion, and in more than one fourth of the stories a mathematical notion is the main character. Only few of the stories facilitate the readers’ involvement trough questions or exercises related with the mathematical content processed. The answers to the questionnaire shows that students consider useful the use of children stories for mathematical education, but none of them knows any children story which can be used at a mathematics activity, and only one third of them used a children story for mathematics education purposes, mostly a story written by them or by their classmates. They felt the task to write a story of average difficulty and very enjoyable.

Keywords:

Mathematics education, preschool, children story, pre-service teachers.