Difficulties Encountered by the Grade 1 Pupils in Mathematics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

The future of tomorrow's education is in the hands of today. And a big part of a child's education is learning Mathematics. At the very early age of the pupil's Mathematics already exist. But children nowadays find this subject a big problem on their part. They close their ears when hearing numbers and cross their eyes when reading mathematical symbols and operations. They even hesitate to listen to the discussion. But we cannot escape from Math. Every year of our life Math is in there. So we need to give attention to this. But we cannot deny the fact that Mathematics is a very difficult subject. So we should encourage a change in the way we view Math especially the pupils. It should not be hard; instead, it should be interesting for the pupils to appreciate the subject.

METHODS

The researcher used the descriptive method of research to determine the difficulties encountered by the grade 1 pupils in Bagong Silang Elementary School in Mathematics. It involves one hundred four pupils who took Mathematics. A self-structured questionnaire was used to determine the difficulties and the performance was determined based on the final grade of the pupils. The statistical tools used in this study are frequency distribution to determine the responses for every item in the questionnaire, the percentage to determine the magnitude of a part compared with the whole, ranking to determine the positional importance of the items of frequency count and percentage.

RESULTS

It was found out that as to the performance of Grade 1 pupils in Mathematics using their final grades obtained, the majority falls under the low o and very low average level. The difficult part of the lesson that burden the pupils are adding/subtracting numbers including money with or without regrouping and analyzing word problems. Based on this results teacher of grade 1 pupils in Mathematics should really take in charge of making this situation simpler. They should demonstrate positive attitudes towards Math and to our pupils to encourage them to have an interest in learning Math.

DISCUSSIONS

Based on the findings of the study, teachers should give emphasis on the difficulties encountered by the pupils in Mathematics to improve the performance in Math. We should change how the pupils view math activities and lessons for them to cooperate in the teaching-learning process in order to enhance the ability of the pupils. Still, teachers are the mind shaper of the pupils.