Research Assistants

Procedures
Sixteen of the undergraduate students were recruited to be the research assistants for the study. Each research assistant work with a group of three students. The whole study consisted of pretest and posttest (i.e., assessment sessions) and six training sessions. Every Kindergartener or first grade student received the pretest and posttest that run 15-20 minutes. For the students in the treatment groups, they were instructed twice per week with either bundles or blocks instruction across the six trainings sessions within three weeks. Every training session took 15-20 minutes. The students who missed the trainings sessions were required to make up the trainings in add-on time.
Assessment Sessions The sixteen research assistants were working with the mathematics teachers in the classrooms contexts and working with the students in one-to-one
The purpose of the task was to know the students’ numeracy identification, place value understanding and operation knowledge. The six questions were presented to the students one by one. The research assistants would show them the worksheet and grade the answers from the students (The grading criteria are seen from Appendix A). The same policy was applied to the base 10 questions parts as those of number estimation task. The research assistants were not allowed to provide any answers or clues to the questions. All the responses from the researchers could merely support the students’ cognitive learning and based on the pre-existing answers of the students. If the students were unable to answers or asking for help, they were allowed to skip the questions or be reminded about their previous answers. In that case the research assistants usually encourage and appraise their performance and keep the students continue on the