Making sense in their world...

Lesson TWO & THREE - Making (NUMBER) sense in their world...

Number sense is an important skill to teach. Children develop this skill over time based on their experiences in school and out of school. Having number sense helps us to create strategies to problem solve.

What does this imply? As a teacher, I have to provide many opportunities for children to investigate, to think about what they are investigating, gather information, organise it, use information to problem solve, explain their reasoning...

There are plenty of opportunities to develop number sense in the classroom. Some examples would include grouping sets into tens and ones, encouraging guessing (How many broad beans do you think are in this bottle?), playing addition and subtraction games, estimating (How many grapes do you think are in this bunch?), guessing a number (give clues, eg. It's a bigger/ smaller number, it's less than 10 but more than 5..), card games, etc.

In my primary and even secondary school days, I recall that the focus in mathematics lessons was always the answer, the correct one, ideally. However, the focus today, is and should be, very different. It is important for children (and adults as well) to know WHY and not just how numbers work..