Subitizing helps children develop a better understanding of numbers and their underlying meaning. Children tell ‘how many’ in a blink when they subitize. (source: A Study Subitizing: What Is It? Why Teach It? by Douglas Clements, University of Denver). Thus, you make children ‘quantity intelligent’ when you encourage them to guess the amount by sight.
Having gathered information about the teaching tools, lets’ take a look at the math skills where subitizing helps, and offers good learning support: 1. Number sense building – Develop foundational or conceptual number sense in early math learners. 2.
1. Children belonging to 3-4 years of age group subitize faster, and tell exact quantities within 120ms. Thus, it hints at the role of subitizing in building number fluency in early learners. (Chi & Klahr, 1975). 2. The subitizing accuracy develops while moving from age 3 to age 4.
This ability to give a rough figure of the numbers of objects (say a number of dots in a block or a dice surface) is called Subitizing. Thus, to elaborate, subitize is to guess the number of countable objects without actually counting them one by one. Just like you read the words by sight, at the start (read sight words), ...
Hence, considering subtizing as a basic skill to improve better math literacy in kids is not a whimsical approach of a teacher, but is a well-thought strategy. It proves to be a proven tool for building confidence in kids for number learning. By using subittizing, teachers help kids remove math scare surrounding the learning and absorbing of more complex number relationships and operations. So, let’s take a look at various strategies teachers can employ to introduce subtizing to kids and make them aware of their estimation abilities.
Even in a later stage, this art of guessing stays with the kids and help them attain fluency with advanced math skills.
When is the right time to introduce subitizing? Well, the right time to introduce subitizing is kindergarten level. Since many children struggle to read and recognize numbers at this level and are in process of building number recognition skills, the subitizing proves its relevance quite significantly. It does prepare children to move to building better number literacy and relating the number they read with the quantity they learned about by subitizing. Even in a later stage, this art of guessing stays with the kids and help them attain fluency with advanced math skills.