Picture books are a big part of every child's childhood. When being read to a child goes into the world of imagination. A picture book is based on the combination of visual and verbal communication. Text and illustrations intertwine, each carrying its own meaning but at the same time they support and complement one another. While listening to a story and looking at the illustrations, children learn and internalise the meaning. Mathematical picture books are those who lead students to discover, acquire and internalise mathematical concepts and ideas. Mathematical picture books allow students to use their pre-existing knowledge and build upon it. Furthermore, they present mathematics in a way that is logical to the children.
In this Master's thesis, we defined maths as a subject and covered the principles of maths lessons. We presented in more detail the substantive strands to which the empirical part is linked. Among the curriculum content, this is the measurement strand. We focused on the set of measurement, development of measurement concepts and the aims and contents of measurement in the first three years of schooling. When teaching math, teachers use various didactic aids so as to illustrate abstract mathematical concepts and procedures, while at the same time influencing students' activity and motivation to work. In the theoretical part, we introduced the concept of motivation and defined its importance in teaching. We introduced context-based knowledge, which contributes to a better understanding of mathematical concepts. In the following, we described picture books in general, presented their definition, division and the interaction between text and illustration. We have paid special attention to mathematical picture books. We presented reasons for their usage in the classroom and summarised findings of newer research studies. Finally, we presented some picture books about measurement.
The main aim of the empirical part was to make a mathematical picture book about measurement. The title was »Bratje škratje«. The illustrations were made with the help of a programme called Canva, while the text is our own work. When the storybook was completed, we observed 3 lessons about all three measuring concepts (length, mass, capacity) in each of the 1st Grade classes. One class was the control group, while the other was the experimental group. A revision and assessment lessons followed which were different within groups. We were interested in whether the usage of mathematical picture book “Bratje Škratje” led to better knowledge and motivation of students and how context-based problems affected knowledge.
Our findings showed that using the mathematical picture book “Brate Škratje” leads to better knowledge and better results on the assessment sheet than teaching measurement in the traditional way. Mathematical picture book had a motivating effect on the students. The context itself, however, provided no additional support to the students' understanding of the problems as the mathematical concepts were familiar to them and presented no obstacle.
The results of the research provide early elementary teachers with benefits of using mathematical picture books in lessons and encourage teachers to use them more often as a tool to develop mathematical concepts. Mathematical storybooks make lessons more interesting for the students and provide a way to reinforce the students' positive attitude towards maths.
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