Exploring Young Students' Functional Thinking

The Early Years Generalising Project (EYGP) involves Australian Years 1-4 (age 5-9) students and investigates how they grasp and express generalisations. This paper focuses on data collected from six Year 1 students in an exploratory study within a clinical interview setting that required students to identify function rules. Preliminary findings suggest that the use of gestures (both by students and interviewers), self-talk (by students), and concrete acting out, assisted students to reach generalisations and to begin to express these generalities. It also appears that as students become aware of the structure, their use of gestures and self- talk tended to decrease