The effect of Touch Math multi-sensory program on teaching basic computation skills to young children identified as at risk for the acquisition of computation skills

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the effect of Touch Math multi-sensory program on   teaching basic computation skills to young children identified as at risk for the acquisition of computation skills. The children selected for the present study were all kindergarteners from two public kindergarten schools, located at Nasr city, Cairo. 40 children from both schools were included. Of the children who participated in the study (N= 40), 72% were male and 28% were female. Mean age was 5.3 years. A quasi-experimental, two-groups pretest-posttest design was employed, where the same dependent variables (addition skills and subtraction skills) were measured in the two groups of children before (pretest) and after (posttest) a treatment was administered. Using two-way ANOVA, the author analyzed the data from the pre- and post-test.  The data were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 18.0. The results of the two-way ANOVA and t- test showed that there were differences in post- test mean scores between experimental and control   groups in addition and subtraction skills. In favor of the experimental group, which indicated the effectiveness of Touch Math multi-sensory program. Implications for practice, recommendations for future research and conclusion were included.