A Study On The Influencing Factors And Educational Countermeasures Of Children 's Classification Ability In

The development of preschool children’s thinking ability is closely related to the development of their classification capacity as preschool children’s classification capacity reflects their thinking ability and manifests their cognitive and intelligence level. For those children, thinking ability especially classification capacity which helps them acquire mathematics, is the basis for the formation of numeral concept as well as correct count. The classification process involves a series of basic stages, such as analyzing, comprising, observing and making judgment, which positively impact the exercise and development of children’s thinking ability. This paper intends to explore factors influencing preschool children’s classification ability during different ages in two experiments, through which the author tries to provide some specific and feasible education guidance for kindergarten teachers. By analyzing data obtained from the basic classification experiment (Experiment 1), the author found that the development of preschool children’s classification ability had the following characteristics: classification ability of those children improves with age and reference used for classifying is becoming various:from kindergarten level 1 to 3, children’s classification reference correspondingly changes from color to color, daily situation, function and finally to daily situation, function. According to such trend, children’s classification reference gradually develops from simplicity and shallow to complexity and abstract, besides, children begin to use abstract concept as reference unconsciously. In experiment 1, the author respectively supposed verbal instruction and the degree of knowing about experimental materials to be factors influencing preschool children’s classification ability. Firstly the author took verbal instruction as the constant and the result shows that for children from kindergarten level 1, whether those children are familiar with experimental materials or not, verbal construction fails to improve their scores in the classification test; for those from kindergarten level 2, whether they are familiar with experimental materials or not, their scores in the classification test will improve as long as they are provided with verbal instruction; for those from kindergarten level 3, it’s exactly the same thing. Afterwards they author took the familiarity with experimental materials as the constant and the result shows that for children from kindergarten level 1, whether those children are given verbal instruction or not, the familiarity with experimental materials has no great effect on their scores in the classification test; for those from kindergarten level 2, whether those children are given verbal instruction or not, scores of those children who are familiar with experimental materials are always better than those who are not familiar with experimental materials; for those from kindergarten level 3, it’s exactly the same thing. By analyzing data obtained from the class inclusion experiment(Experiment 2), the author found that as children grow older, their performance in class inclusion tasks gradually improves. The class inclusion experiment including variants (adding quality of consciousness as one feature of class) may not significantly improve children’s performance in class inclusion tests, while children’s performance will be enhanced if more subclasses are added, which means the more subclasses are taken into consideration, the better scores children will obtain in class inclusion tests.Based on the result of above analysis, this paper puts forward the following guidance for the development of children’s classification capacity in different ages:to children from kindergarten level 1, teachers had better help them improve their classification capacity over the course of the game and take advantage of daily life to randomly instruct them in classification practice in order to enrich their knowledge and improve their classification capacity; to children from kindergarten level 2, teachers should enhance verbal instruction, lead children to speak out classification references and use familiar materials to improve children’s classification capacity. Besides, teachers should cultivate preschool children’s classification and generalization ability by enriching subclasses; to children from kindergarten level 3, teachers should enrich children’s vocabulary, increase the difficulty of classification and guide them to conduct secondary classification so that children’s abstract generalization and classification ability as well as their cognition of numbers get improved, by which preschool children are prepared for primary school.