Preventing low achievement in arithmetic through the didactical materials of the PerContare project

PerContare is an innovative Italian project, built upon collaboration between cognitive psychologists and mathematics educators, aimed at developing teaching strategies for preventing and addressing early low achievement in arithmetic. The paper describes two emblematic examples of activities proposed within the project to foster the development of number sense that are grounded upon a kinaesthetic and visual-spatial approach. A study within the project was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of the materials used in the experimental classes. Results revealed a higher performance of the experimental group on a number of items of the assessment batteries. Moreover,this group contained half as many subjects with performance below the cut off score on the AC-MT battery compared with the control group. This suggests that the didactical materials developed in PerContare do contribute significantly to diminishing the number of potential false positives in the diagnoses of dyscalculia.