We often encounter mathematics in our everyday activities. Children are, already at an early age, faced with mathematics during play times and everyday activities. A teacher's task is to introduce a child to mathematics, awaken his interest and curiosity. In doing so, it is immensely helpful that the teacher knows what the child is and is not capable of doing, how much knowledge the child has at the beginning of schooling and in which contents is his knowledge stronger or weaker. This way the teachers knows what contents need to be especially introduced to the child and what needs to be further refreshed.
The theoretical part of the thesis presents the curriculum for mathematics, its tasks, its purpose and its structure. I focused on learning goals in arithmetic, especially on those that are repeated, complemented, and upgraded through the first three years of primary school. The teaching of arithmetic in the first three years of primary school is described. Next, Gagne's taxonomy of knowledge is described. It is most commonly used in classifying knowledge in mathematics’ classes. Piaget's theory of cognitive development is presented, which most of all cognitive theories relates to the development of the representation of numbers. I also referenced later criticisms of this theory, new research and findings.
In the empirical part, we studied the knowledge of first grade students on arithmetic with which they are presented in the first three years of primary school. We were interested in whether they achieved the goals set in the curriculum for the first grade and to what extent they exceed them. We have checked in which contents of arithmetic and for which types of knowledge pupils largely exceed the learning objectives defined in the curriculum for the first grade. We also checked whether pupils' knowledge of arithmetic varies by gender.
The results of the research showed that pupils were very successful and achieved the learning objectives that are included in the curriculum for the first grade. To a considerable extent, goals for the second and third grades are also achieved. Regarding the contents of arithmetic, the knowledge expected for first grade was exceeded to a greater extent in the tasks that belonged to the set of natural numbers and the number 0, in comparison with the tasks from mathematical operations and their properties. There were differences between genders, but they were not statistically significant.
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