Home activities promoting mathematical skills in foundation phase : a case study of grandmother-headed households

Recent factors identified as contributory to poor mathematics performance in South Africa include lack of parental involvement coupled by the divorce of mathematics education to children’s everyday lives. This exploratory study, therefore focused on home activities grandmothers engage their Grade 2 grandchildren that may promote mathematical skills of Foundation Phase learners. This study followed a qualitative, interpretive and case study research design, to explore home activities grandmothers engage their Grade 2 grandchildren that may promote mathematical skills of Foundation Phase learners. A small scale study of six grandmothers and three Grade 2 teachers were sampled through purposive and snowball sampling. In line with the protocol of the case study, semi-structured individual face to face interviews and shadowing were used to collect data. One striking feature of the main findings was the diversity mathematics applications home activities contained. These include physical, financial and fun playful home activities. Data also revealed that these home activities could reinforce numbers and what numbers mean; reinforce shape recognition and spatial relationships; complement matching, classification and sorting and reinforce measuring and time. This implies that curriculum must incorporate children’s social capital. Both teachers and grandmothers acknowledged that children’s mathematics education is complex and an effective partnership between grandmothers and teachers is needed if children are to be competent in mathematics.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufh/vital:28796
Date January 2017
CreatorsHlungulu, Nolukholo Faith
PublisherUniversity of Fort Hare, Faculty of Education
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, MEd
Format179 leaves, pdf
RightsUniversity of Fort Hare

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