The Effects of Representational Instruction and The Great Race on Preschoolers’ Early Numeracy Skills

Preschool students’ mastery of early numeracy skills is important, so they enter kindergarten with the necessary prerequisite skills, which are predictive of achievement in later elementary grades. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a concrete-representational-abstract (CRA) instructional package on the foundational early numeracy skills of three preschool students. A multiple baseline across participants design was employed. Treatment sessions were 15 to 20 minutes long and held twice a week. The primary outcome variable was a measure of match quantity and the generalization outcome variable was a measure of number sequencing. Results indicate that CRA was effective for increasing the match quantity fluency skills of two of three participants; however, the effects did not generalize to number sequencing.