Before children enter primary school, they have individual learning and educational experiences. They gain these experiences during early childhood education in the family and through informal, exploratory and playful forms of learning in the pre-school sector (MSB NRW, 2021).
Mathematics education in primary school builds on the children’s early mathematical experiences, deepening and expanding them. Children can successfully acquire subject-specific competencies in primary school mathematics education if they have acquired basic prerequisite skills. These prerequisite skills relate, for example, to perceiving differences or similarities, classifying, sorting, recognizing patterns, simultaneous grasping numbers up to 4, determining unstructured quantities by counting, comparing quantities (more, less, equal), quantity invariance, one-to-one correspondence, saying the number word series to 10 forward, and understanding the direction concept of counting backwards (e.g., Desoete et al., 2009; MSB NRW, 2021; NCTM, 2000). If children bring these prerequisite skills with them only partially or inadequately when they enter school, they must first build them up to ensure further successful learning (MSB NRW, 2021).
Over the course of primary school, basic mathematical content, tasks and forms of presentation are repeatedly addressed at different levels and thus continuously enriched, differentiated and interlinked.
Mathematics education at primary level follows a pedagogical understanding of mathematical achievement that combines performance requirements of the school with individual support for students. In this context, it is the teachers‘ task to provide individual support to all students based on the identified learning level and thus create the conditions for successful further learning (MSB NRW, 2021). This is where the MADITA app comes in…