NES: ECE: Learning in the Content Areas: Mathematics

Of the following, which is accurate regarding the relationship of problem-solving skills to math?

• Children are not interested in solving everyday problems; adults must give incentives.

• Children learn mathematical thinking; other things promote language and social skills.

• Children learn through solving problems that there can be multiple possible solutions.

• Children should not propose problems or ask questions about them; they adults should.

When children develop good problem-solving skills, how does this affect related characteristics?

• Problem-solving skills promote abilities with self-regulation.

• Problem-solving skills promote rigidity more than flexibility.

• Problem-solving skills promote impatience over persistence.

• Problem-solving skills promote the dangerous taking of risks.

To help young children reason logically about math and science concepts, what should adults use?

• Only abstract examples to stimulate higher order cognitive skills.

• Concrete objects like toys, crayons, and paper, and their fingers.

• Pictures, diagrams, charts they draw that illustrate concepts.

• Concrete objects like toys, crayons, and paper, and their fingers. Pictures, diagrams, charts they draw that illustrate concepts. are better than abstract examples.

What is true about how adults and children communicate about mathematics?

• It helps children identify their thoughts to converse with adults, but not to converse with peers.

• Communicating about math problems furthers mathematical thinking, but not any other skills.

• Diagrams and symbols help children understand math concepts, but words and pictures do not.

• Reading children's books together that combine numbers, rhymes, and repetition is efficacious.

Expert advice on games and activities adults can use to develop children's early math skills is best represented by which of the following?

• Adults should ask children guiding questions as in the Socratic Method rather than giving answers.

• Adults should propose math story problems to young children according to their age/grade levels.

• Adults should not pose problems like division to toddlers as they lack the capacity to handle them.

• Adults should use unfamiliar objects in story problems because familiar ones will distract children.

Of the following, which most helps young children connect mathematics to real life?

• Formal math instruction in school.

• Describing activities in math words.

• Using novel manipulatives in math.

• Original examples of new concepts.

When adults play with young children at pouring liquid into differently sized and shaped containers, which mathematical skill(s) does this develop?

• All these and more

• Measurement

• Conservation

• Estimation

Which of the following is true about representation skills relative to young children?

• Children will not develop representation skills until they are older.

• Children are not using representation when they count on fingers.

• Children draw pictures because they have no representation skills.

• Children show representation in make-believe play and tally marks.

How can a teacher help a young child apply math process skills during typical preschool activities?

• When a child sorts toys by color, the teacher describes this as classification.

• When a child sorts toys by color, the teacher asks how s/he is sorting them.

• When a child sorts toys by color, the teacher asks how else s/he might sort.

• When a child sorts toys by color, the these all apply varying math process skills.

Which of the following is true regarding children's development of number sense?

• Children must learn all number names before they learn to count.

• Children learn to count before learning all the names of numbers.

• Children's number sense is equal to, and a synonym for, counting.

• Children's number sense is that numbers only describe quantities.