What If Everything You'd Been Told About Teaching Number Sense To Young Children Was Wrong? Part 2
So what is subitising and how does it differ to counting?
These was a question I asked myself, for a long time.
Subitising is our ability to know ’how many?’ without counting.
It turns out that this is a skill we’re all born with. From a very young age we recognise certain patterns of ‘number’ such as the ‘3’ made up my the human face (but of course we don’t think of it as ‘three’ because that’s a word we haven’t learned yet). We also know when there are more and less of something (such a pieces of fruit for us to eat). This skill of recognise a number pattern (in the case of our main carer’s face) and a larger quantity of food are driven by our primal instinct to keep us alive.
‘Counting’ (for cardinality - to find out ‘how many?’) by contrast is a human creation.
The symbols and names we used were invented and evolved over tens of thousands of years. Our ancestors operated in a world without number names or a counting system and definitely still used ‘number sense’ every day to solve life’s problems.
Subitising means we look at the whole and recognise the ‘concept image’ of an amount.
We later learn to use number names to label this amount.
Think about it, a young children doesn’t need to know the word ‘banana’ to know what a banana is. The word comes a long way after the understanding. This is how we need to think about learning ‘number sense’. Our children develop the sense of certain amounts (typically 1,2 and 3) and later learn to label these amounts with number names.
So, how can they label the amounts when they can’t count?
Good question!
This is were the difference between ‘counting for cardinality’ and 'counting for ordinality’ come in.
When we count for ‘ordinality’ we learn the number names in order and the patterns of the counting system; in English ‘one, two, three’ etc. Reading books with numbers in, singing songs and using action rhymes all help develop this skill. When we bring the number names together with the ability to subitise, children learn to label what they already understood with number names.
Is this all beginning to make more sense and are you now asking yourself lots of other questions around how counting (for cardinality) and subitising differ and/or work together?
Knowing what I’m sharing here, are you wondering how you should be teaching ‘Number Sense’, what comes first and what to do if your children are already counting everything but don’t appear to be able to subitise?
Giving you the answers to all of these questions (and more!) is what this our 'Super Subitising Challenge' Challenge' is all about.
Run only once a year and offered to you FREE of charge this time, instead of a one off course, where there’s no access to a recording meaning so much is forgotten and there’s no way to revisit, you’ll have the opportunity to join me for two whole weeks of recorded sessions, live teaching from myself and the support of like-minded practitioners who are the same journey as you but, in many cases, further ahead so able to share what they’ve learned so far.
So, are you ready to jump on board the EYMaths train and discover what’s been missing from your ‘Maths Tool Box’?
I can promise you’ll NEVER think about ‘number’ in the same way ever again (and you’ll LOVE every minute!)
