A Development of the Basic Mathematical Skills Based on the Educational Game Activities for the Pre-School Students of Ban Nokten School under Ubon Ratchathani Primary Educational Service Area Office 3

Abstract

The objectives of the research were 1) to develop the basic mathematical skills gained from educational game activities 2) to compare the results of the development of basic mathematical skills gained from educational game activities with the set 80% criteria and 3) to compare the results of basic mathematical skill development of the experimental group receiving  educational games with the control group. The samples used in the research were 18 experimental pre-school children and 18 control pre-school children of Ban Nokten School under Ubon Ratchathani Primary Educational Service Area Office 3 in the school year 2013, derived by a cluster random sampling. The research instruments were divided into two types : 1) the experimental instruments included 20 lessons to develop the basic mathematical skills and 20 educational games for the development of basic  mathematical skills. 2) The instruments used to collect data were the end-of-the circuit quizzes; the test of the basic mathematical skills with difficulty value ranging from .30 - .75, discrimination value ranging from .20 - .90 and confidence value equivalent to .93; the observation format for the educational games; the format for the children’s learning behavior; the format for teachers’ teaching behavior and a daily record. Statistics used were percentage, mean, standard deviation, and nonparametric

The research findings were as follows :

1. The development of the basic mathematic skills for the pre-school children consisted of four circuits : circuit one covered the lesson plans 1-5 using the image cutting and piecing game; circuit two included the lesson plans 6-10 using the image-number matching; circuit three included the lesson plans 11-15 using the games to observe the details of images or pictures and circuit five covered the lesson plans 16-20 involving the image adding game. The advantages and disadvantages acquired were analyzed to be used as a guideline in developing and improving the operation results. Learning activities were composed of three stages : introduction was a preparation for learning; teaching was concerned with practice and observation steps in which the teachers had to explain how to play the games; conclusion used songs, contents were concluded and the group performance was evaluated.
2. Considering the results of the basic mathematical skill development, it was found that the pre-school children had a basic mathematical skills averaging 94.72, which were higher than the set criteria. No less than 80 of the students in the study had secured 80% of the total scores. The results of the test before and after the operation showed that the pre-school children had higher basic mathematical skills after the development than before with a statistical significance of .01.
3. The comparison of the basic mathematical skills between the experimental group and the control group found that they had the average scores of 94.72% and 69.44% respectively. The results of the difference test between the two groups were equivalent to 5.12. It meant that the experimental group receiving the educational games had higher basic mathematical skills than the control group with a statistical significance of .01.