Spot On At School
‘Manipulatives can be powerful tools to support sense making, mathematical thinking and reasoning when they are used as tools to support these processes rather than as adjuncts to blindly following a taught procedure to arrive at an answer’ (Back, 2013). Click here to read Jenni’s article in full.
Spot On With Numbers is based on the Hungarian Number Frame which provides children with a useful structure to make sense of numbers. The pegs and boards are flexible and intuitive to use, so children are free to manipulate quantities in a way that helps them develop their mathematical thinking and reasoning. Spot On With Numbers empowers children to represent and physically manipulate numbers in a way that makes sense to them; thereby providing a safe environment to maximise learning. The different ways children choose to use the pegs and boards also provides many opportunities to make discoveries and see connections.
For a manipulative to support sense making, children need to subitise the total and where possible, not count all. Subitising gives children a sense of the numbers they are working with. The resources encourage subitising and this skill of seeing sets of numbers can be transferred to working with other resources.
It helps children to visualise and therefore move on from relying heavily on concrete resources. Visualising also helps retain number facts, aids with working memory, problem solving and develops conceptual understanding.
Using Spot On in class provides variation, enabling the teacher to spend longer on a concept, ensuring depth of understanding. The Pegs and Boards are flexible, so multiple representations can be made, providing links and allowing children to make connections. All students can be extended with opportunities to make discoveries.
Exploring patterns with Spot On is so important for developing an understanding of the number system and is a great way to focus on the creative side of mathematics.
Spot On With Numbers enables children to partition and manipulate numbers, preparing them to be able to perform this task mentally. The ability to compose (blend) and decompose (decode) numbers is perhaps as important to developing number sense as phonic is to learning to read.
Although it is great to keep the whole class together in their learning, addressing specific difficulties with number sense early on in a child’s education can have an invaluable impact on their future maths learning. The Spot On intervention programme also includes support for those children who may have dyscalculia and working memory difficulties.
For more information about Maths Learning Difficulties, Dyscalculia and Special Educational Needs, please see our SEN page.
