Let’s do the Math… About Creativity and Mathematical Reasoning: A Correlational Study in Primary School Children

Mathematics, being a very ancient discipline, is usually seen as a formal subject that must be learned for school purposes, which is very far from creativity and fun. Also, mathematical skills are often considered a talent, so students are easily divided into gifted and not gifted, with a focus on speed and accuracy rather than encouraging the process of juggling between divergent and convergent thinking. In the present paper, we aimed at investigating the relationship between mathematical reasoning and different aspects of creative thinking, such as divergent and convergent creativity, aesthetic appreciation, and humor. To do so, 146 second and third graders in a primary school in Milan have been recruited and tested with mathematical and creative tasks. Correlational analyses showed significant positive relations between flexibility and originality dimensions of creativity and mathematical performance. Results are discussed by providing a theoretical framework about the relation between mathematics and creative skills.

The reality of psychological defense deception among students practicing sports in the faculties of physical education and Sports Sciences/Baghdad University

The study aimed to apply the measure of psychological defense deception for university students practices for sports, and to recognize the level of psychological defense deception among university students practices for sports, and the researchers adopted the descriptive curriculum by the survey method a sample of third-graders in the Faculties of Physical Education and Sports Sciences /Baghdad University for the academic year (2020-2021) and the number of the students are (209) students, selected from them (189) students by (90.43%) In the random way of the main application sample, also (10) students were selected by (4,785%) in a random way of the exploration experiment sample, a recent specialized measure were adopted by the two researchers for the target sample of measurement, and the procedures were from a exploration experiment and a major survey in the research for the period between (2/3/2021 and 6/4/2021), as after the application of the measure by conducting the main survey they were mediated by paper forms, and the results were addressed by the statistical bag system (SPSS) (V26) to be the conclusions and recommendations that university students practice sports have an acceptable level of psychological defense deception, and need to raise the recommended level of compensation and projection of Psychological defense deception are characterized by surpassing, and it is necessary to increase interest in the mechanisms to encourage university students to exercise in student activities with the availability of reinforcement of various kinds, and it is necessary for the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research to ensure sports culture and its role in the psychology of female students in education courses Continuous and electronic activity platforms to communicate between faculty members

The Effect of using the 5E Instructional Strategy in developing critical thinking skills for third-grade intermediate students in the jurisprudence course: أثر استخدام استراتيجية دورة التعلم الخماسية في تنمية مهارات التفكير الناقد لدى طالبات الصف الثالث المتوسط في مقرر الفقه

This study investigates the effect of the 5E Instructional strategy on the development of critical thinking skills of intermediate third graders through Jurisprudence course compared to the normal way of teaching. In order to achieve this goal the researcher adopted a pre- post two- group (experimental and control) quasi- experimental research methodology. The tool of the study was a critical thinking skills test based on Mary McFarland's strategy. After the validation and calculation of the tool's reliability, the researcher piloted the tool at a random sample consisting of (63) female intermediate third graders in thirtieth Medina School. The study used a number of appropriate statistical analyses which included: means of scores, standard deviation, alpha Cronbach coefficient reliability test of critical thinking skills, and T- test for independent samples to ensure group homogeneity of study groups, and to see the effect of using the 5E Instructional strategy on developing the critical thinking skills of the students. The obtained results indicated that there are statistically significant differences at the level of significance (a = 0.05) between the mean scores of experimental group and control group students in the critical thinking skills test in favor of the experimental group. In the light of these results, a number of recommendations have been made, namely: religious science teachers should be supervised towards more attention to the development of critical thinking skills; paying attention to the involvement of the student in the learning process; encouraging students to express their opinions and being able to defend their point of view in order to increase the level of critical thinking skills and finally to employ the 5E Instructional strategy in teaching jurisprudence course. Based on the findings of the study, a group of suggestions for future studies have been made that can be considered as extension to the current study.

World-Around-Us Lesson in the Third Grade: “Diversity of the Animal World (Fauna)”

The article offers for consideration a variant of a lesson on the subject “The World-Around-Us”, which is held in the third grade based on the use of the educational and methodological set “Primary School of the XXI century”. The purpose of the lesson, which is part of the “Kingdoms of Nature” section, is to provide students with new knowledge about the diversity of the animal world. The high working capacity of junior schoolchildren during the entire period of the lesson is ensured by the use of various types of tasks that require constant mental activity, reasonable alternation of material of varying degrees of complexity, and the inclusion of elements of art pedagogy in the educational process. The use of art-pedagogical techniques allows the third graders to be informed as effectively as possible about the real results of their studies. Figuratively speaking, junior schoolchildren “put new knowledge in a portfolio and take it with them”, that is, they discover the expansion of their knowledge on the topic under study as a visual result of their activities in the lesson.

Let’s do the Math… About Creativity and Mathematical Reasoning: A Correlational Study in Primary School Children

Mathematics, being a very ancient discipline, is usually seen as a formal subject that must be learned for school purposes, which is very far from creativity and fun. Also, mathematical skills are often considered a talent, so students are easily divided into gifted and not gifted, with a focus on speed and accuracy rather than encouraging the process of juggling between divergent and convergent thinking. In the present paper, we aimed at investigating the relationship between mathematical reasoning and different aspects of creative thinking, such as divergent and convergent creativity, aesthetic appreciation, and humor. To do so, 146 second and third graders in a primary school in Milan have been recruited and tested with mathematical and creative tasks. Correlational analyses showed significant positive relations between flexibility and originality dimensions of creativity and mathematical performance. Results are discussed by providing a theoretical framework about the relation between mathematics and creative skills.

Acoustic Features of Oral Reading Prosody and the Relation With Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension in Taiwanese Children

Purpose: The study aimed to examine whether oral reading prosody—the use of acoustic features (e.g., pitch and duration variations) when reading passages aloud—predicts reading fluency and comprehension abilities. Method: We measured vocabulary, syntax, word reading, reading fluency (including rate and accuracy), reading comprehension (in Grades 3 and 4), and oral reading prosody in Taiwanese third-grade children ( N = 109). In the oral reading prosody task, children were asked to read aloud a passage designed for third graders and then to answer forced-choice questions. Their oral reading prosody was measured through acoustic analyses including the number of pause intrusions, intersentential pause duration, phrase-final comma pause duration, child–adult pitch match, and sentence-final pitch change. Results: Analyses of variance revealed that children's number of pause intrusions differed as a function of word reading. After controlling for age, vocabulary and syntactic knowledge, and word reading, we found that different dimensions of oral reading prosody contributed to reading rate. In contrast, the number of pause intrusions, phrase-final comma pause duration, and child–adult pitch match predicted reading accuracy and comprehension. Conclusions: Oral reading prosody plays an important role in children's reading fluency and reading comprehension in tone languages like Mandarin. Specifically, children need to read texts prosodically as evidenced by fewer pause intrusions, shorter phrase-final comma pause duration, and closer child–adult pitch match, which are early predictive makers of reading fluency and comprehension.

Effect of timing of school enrollment on physical fitness in third graders

Timing of school enrollment may vary considerably due to children who were enrolled early / delayed or skipped / repeated a school year. Accordingly, the age range within school grades includes older-than-keyage (OTK) and younger-than-keyage (YTK) children. Studies examining academic performance of OTK and YTK children versus keyage children reported large differences in academic performance. However, there are no studies available that examined physical fitness of OTK and YTK versus keyage children. The aim of this study was to compare physical fitness of OTK (N = 25,086) and YTK (N = 1,885) children versus keyage children (N = 108,295) in a sample of German third graders. Physical fitness tests comprised cardiorespiratory endurance, coordination, speed, lower, and upper limbs muscle power. Predictions of physical fitness performance for YTK and OTK children were estimated using data from keyage children by taking age, sex, school, and cohort into account. The difference between observed and predicted z-scores yielded a delta z-score that was used as a dependent variable in the linear mixed models. Findings indicate that OTK children showed impaired performance compared to keyage children, especially in coordination, and that YTK children outperformed keyage children, especially in coordination. Teachers should be aware that despite their age advantage, OTK children often show impaired fitness compared to keyage children.

Accommodating Heterogeneity: The Interaction of Instructional Scaffolding with Student Preconditions in the Learning of Hypothesis-Based Reasoning

Hypothesis-based reasoning with conditionals is a skill that is required for engaging in integral activities of modern elementary school science-curricula. The teaching of this skill at this early stage of education, however, is demanding, particularly in whole school classes in which it is difficult to adapt teaching to children’s individual needs. We examine whether a scaffold that is static yet tailored to the context, in which the teacher explicitly models the reasoning process, manages to meet students’ individual cognitive preconditions for learning this skill. Within an inquiry-based learning setting, N = 143 third-graders underwent either an experimental condition in which they received the explicit scaffold, or a control condition in which they did not receive this specific scaffold. Employing a latent transition analysis and a general additive model, it is examined how the additional scaffold interacted with students’ prior knowledge, inhibition ability, and logical reasoning as judged by their own teachers. It is found that the additional scaffolds managed to meet the needs of students with little prior knowledge; under the control condition, students with little prior knowledge showed decreased learning achievement, whereas under the experimental condition, students with differing prior knowledge learned to comparable extent and on a higher level. The scaffolds also almost fully diminished a disadvantage for students with lower logical reasoning, and supported students with high inhibition ability in mastering the most difficult aspect of reasoning based on irrelevant evidence. Implications for science education are discussed.