| Sumario: | As a consequence of the impact of the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and its lockdown regulations on all sectors, including the educational sector, potential knowledge gaps have surfaced. Therefore, the need was identified to bridge such gaps through the curriculum. This was especially evident among rural learners in the Zululand district, who had little or no access to innovative approaches. Guided by the cognitive-fit theory, the objective of the current study was to examine the processing and acquisition of numerical competence among foundation phase learners. Through a case study, 80 Grade 3 learners between the ages of 8 and 9 constituted the sample. Thus, the textual analysis was used to unpack and decontextualise the processing and acquisition of numerical competence by foundation phase learners. The results revealed a multitude of learners' mathematical mistakes that were caused by the learners' limited reading skills and the ill-posed problems and questions. The evidence revealed that pupils who produced an incorrect response may have made a mathematical error related to either a reading error, or may simply have not been able to interpret the figure, which showed a bar graph as an indication of height. Another evidence was that such errors could also be caused by poor sentence structure or sometimes lacking comprehension of the question, which caused the learners not being able to provide mathematically-based reasons for their responses. The evidence revealed that in such cases, pupils generally guessed their responses, as they could not verbalise the mathematical reasoning that would have produced the appropriate responses by the learners. It was concluded that learners' levels of understanding or misunderstandings are a function of two key factors. These include the context of their numerical processing ability and their weak reading skills or ill-posed problems. Thus, it is recommended that reading difficulties can be reduced or even resolved by rephrasing the questions that are far more problematic than previously assumed.
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