Number Sense Screener to help Pre-K, K and 1st graders

A follow-up project to refine and extend Number Sense Screener for identifying children at risk for mathematical difficulties in school was funded by the Institute for Education Science (IES).

Nancy Jordan, school of education, PI and Alice Klein, co-PI will adapt a prior grant project that created Screener for Early Number Sense (SENS) for kindergarten teachers. This 3-year, $1.5 million grant will help teachers identify where students in prekindergarten, kindergarten, and Grade 1 need targeted instruction in the domains of number, number relations, and number operations. An online score report tool will be developed to help teachers interpret how individual children perform on the SENS, and offer intervention actives  to help them address students’  math deficiencies.

Researchers anticipate that SENS will give educators specific information about children’s number sense understanding at each grade level, which they can use to:

• plan their math interventions;
• monitor risk status for mathematical difficulties across grades in early elementary school; and
• easily be used across the three grade levels by different teachers and schools, which will facilitate transition between grades.

All field tests of the SENS and the final validity study will be conducted in two large, urban school districts in Northern California. The schools serve a socioeconomic and ethnically diverse population of students. All tests will include children in PK, K and 1st grades, with half of each grade level from low-income families and half from middle-income families. The first field test will consist of 450 children, second test- 700 children and the third sample 450 children.

SENS will be aligned with the Common Core State Standards and the Numbers, Relations and Operations Core in pre-K and K.