The ULTIMATE GUIDE to Subitising Spots
There really are so many ways to use these highly engaging, colourful cards. Subitising Spots is built to grow with your children, teaching critical skills in counting, addition and subtraction, and logic along the way. Try Quick Images to get you started...
This game allows children to practice subitising – quickly seeing how many in a small set. Playing this game helps children build a strong visual image of number. Research suggests that children who are strong at subitising tend to do better in maths.
This is called conceptual SUBITISING. You can read about the importance of SUBITISING here:
Children usually recognise 1-5 dots in regular dot patterns without needing to count them. But, subitising has limits. For larger quantities, we may need to cluster or chunk objects into smaller groups in order to subitise. For example, 8 dots are usually too many to subitise as 8, but if the dots are arranged as two groups of 4, and we know that two 4s make 8, we can quickly see 8.
As children gain experience, talk about seeing smaller number groups in larger sets. For example, “I saw a group of two dots and a group of three dots and I knew that was five!” Each child might “see” how many in a different way.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you use SUBITISING? How do you use it? Which ideas resonate with you? What do you disagree with? All views are welcome - post in the comments.
Maths IS Visual. Let’s teach it that way.
Thank you for all you do to support your children's number journey. Thank you for watching and listening.
Love, Janey x
References
Clements, D.H. (1999) Subitizing: What is it? Why teach it? Teaching Children Mathematics 5(7) 400-405
Beckwith, Mary, and Frank Restle. "Process of Enumeration." Journal of Educational Research 73 (1966): 437-43
Bobis, J. (1996). Visualisation and the development of number sense with kindergarten children. In J. Mulligan & M. Mitchelmore (Eds), Children’s Number Learning (pp. 17–33). Adelaide: AAMT
Early Spatial Thinking and the Development of Number Sense by Janette Bobis, Australian Primary Mathematics Classroom 13 (1) 2008
Gray, E. & Tall, D. (2007). Abstraction as a natural process of mental compression. Mathematics Education Research Journal 19(2), pp. 23–40.
Klein, A. & Starkey, P. (1988). Universals in the development of early arithmetic cognition. In G. Saxe & M. Gearhart (Eds), Children’s Mathematics (pp. 27–54). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Ma, L. (2010). Knowing and teaching elementary mathematics: Teachers’ understanding of fundamental mathematics in China and the United States. New York, NY: Routledge.
Marton, F. & Neuman, D. (1990). Constructivism, phenomenology and the origin of arithmetic skills. In L.P. Steffe & T. Wood (Eds.), Transforming children’s mathematics education: international perspectives (pp.62- 75). New Jersey: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.
Subitising Through the Years by Valerie Faulkner, North Carolina State University, USA and Jennifer Ainslie, Wake County Public Schools, USA (2017)
Tsao, Y.L. & Lin, Y. C. (2012) Elementary School Teachers' Understanding: Towards the Related Knowledge of Number Sense. US – China Education Review B1. (p 17 – 30)
Wang, Margaret, Lauren Resnick, and Robert F. Boozer. "The Sequence of Development of Some Early Mathematics Behaviors." Child Development 42 (1971): 1767-78.