What If Everything You'd be Taught About How to Teach 'Number Sense' Was Wrong? Part 1

Would you like to know the BIGGEST mistake I ever made in teaching ‘Number Sense’ to my 3-7 year olds?

(And to be fair, I couldn’t have NOT made is because I hadn’t been given the right tools to teach any differently. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.)

I had always believed that it was counting that would enable my children to make sense of how numbers are made up of ‘parts’, how place value (including ‘teen numbers’ of course) work and then calculate (add, subtract, multiply, divide, work with fractions and more). 

Every course, every book, every scheme had taught me this. For over 20 YEARS!

So that’s what I focused upon.

I taught my children to ‘count all’, then ‘count on’. (Whilst at the same time teaching them automatic recall of number bonds without context and by rote, day in and day out).

The result?

I created children whose only strategy for adding and subtracting was to count in 1s on their fingers or ‘head bob’ along an imaginary number line. They took this approach into their formal column methods as they moved through school and I watched in horror, when I caught one of my classes up as 8-9 year olds, as they failed to recall or use their number bonds and instead viewed every aspect of calculating as a ‘counting’ activity.  

The outcome?

This meant that they could solve problems using column methods (purely procedurally as I had done at school, but without number sense fluency) and developing mental calculation was almost impossible and they had no real understanding of partitioning (those number bonds) or place value. 

It was a disaster and one that neither myself nor my school knew how to fix or prevent in the first place. 

Does any of this sound familiar? I see evidence every day on social media that most schools are where I was still and yet we have all the knowledge we need available to us to change this. 

What can we do to change this?

My ‘eureka’ moment began 15 years ago.

What I began to do instead made SO much much sense to me and was incredibly to teach. It was like turning a light on in my children. The way I taught worked brilliantly for my youngest learners and I could even begin to repair the unintentional damage caused to my older children. I’ve been teaching it to everyone I support as a consultant with ever since.

Would you love some FREE training so you can avoid making the mistakes I did?

This is your chance to discover what ‘you didn’t know you didn’t know’;  why counting for cardinality will NEVER lead to number sense fluency and THEN come away armed with what WILL is happening this month in our FREE:

‘2023 Super Subitising Challenge’

Wherever you are in the world, if you want to transform 3-7 year old children’s learning of Maths, and you have access to the internet, you can join us.

Are you ready to NEVER think about teaching ‘Number Sense’ in the same way every again?

Don’t miss your chance to get in early and benefit from a very special BONUS session with me on Sunday 24th September at 7:30pm (UK time). I’ll be there to answer your questions, do some LIVE teaching and get you even MORE excited about what’s to come.

(We'll send you the details of how to attend once you’ve been accepted into the challenge).

I can’t WAIT to welcome you and take that first step together. 

Love to find join our FREE challenge?

For full details of this FREE transformative online learning (running 5th-18th October 2023) click HERE