Hello and welcome to Making Number Sense Makes Sense, a podcast for elementary teachers,
specifically early elementary teachers, looking to really make an impact in the number sense
of their students. Welcome back to the Making Number Sense Makes Sense podcast. Today, I'm
going to talk to you about subitizing. When I first started teaching, I had no idea what
subitizing even was. So now I kind of think of subitizing like a turtle covered in flowers.
I know a turtle covered in flowers. I'll explain. So the other day, I was driving, you know,
listening to music, driving, and I turned to the side and I had to do a double take. I
was like, what is that? So I see on my left a giant turtle, probably like a tortoise. And
it's person, I don't know, owner, I guess, we're just strolling along the sidewalk. And
this turtle was covered in pink flowers. And I definitely had to do a double take. I was
like, did I, did I just see that? Is that really just a tortoise covered in flowers, just walking
in the neighborhood? And it sure enough was. I was like, oh man, I wish I could have taken
a picture because I have never seen a turtle covered in flowers before in real life. I
wouldn't even think to do that. So subitizing is a lot like that. When you are subitizing,
your students are seeing an image with some numeral on it or value on it. So when your
students are subitizing, they're looking at an image and trying to figure out how many
things they're seeing without counting by once. So subitizing is the ability to instantly
recognize a number of objects without counting. And some of your students may come in already
being able to subitize small numbers like one, two or three objects, especially in familiar
items like on a dice base. So a lot of times if students play games at home, they know
what the number, the dot arrangement of a dice looks like for numbers one to six, and
they don't need to count it, they just see it and know that is subitizing. And dice is
just my example, but it could be finger patterns like if you ask a student to show you five
fingers, they'll probably just put up their hand with five on it and not have to count
each and every finger, they just know that one full hand is five. That ability to know
your numbers like that is subitizing. Make things just a little complicated. There's
actually two different types of subitizing. There's perceptual subitizing and conceptual
subitizing us as people can really only subitize around five items. When you start to see bigger
items that you're still able to subitize, what's actually happening is you're seeing
its parts. So for example, if you're looking at a dice face and you're looking at the six,
we know it's a six because it's a common arrangement. But you might also see the six as a column
of three and three. You might also see just two three groups of two, so two, two and two.
You might also see four on top and then two extras on the bottom. You can see find those
little numbers inside the bigger number. So why is that an important skill to have? Well,
subitizing on its face may seem like a skill that kids only really need in isolation, but
that's really not the case. It helps your students develop more sophisticated number
strategies and counting strategies than just counting by once. It helps kids really one
number to another number and kind of see the smaller numbers inside bigger numbers that's
composing and decomposing numbers. So if you're thinking of the number five, then kids will
start to learn that five is also the same as three and two is the same as four and one
is the same as five and zero. So really beginning familiar with those number pairs that make
up bigger numbers helps with addition and subtraction as kids move throughout the grade
levels. As of now, I've been using dice face number patterns that only really go up to
10. But when you start being able to subitize and see the bigger numbers and smaller numbers,
you can start to add those to mental math and addition strategies. If I show you the
number sentence 35 plus 12. Now 35 plus 12, some people will just know what the answer
is. But if you're familiar with your number patterns and trying to figure it out in your
head mental math, you might start to break apart those bigger numbers into smaller numbers.
So one way you might do that is if you think of the number 12, 12 is the same as 10 and
two and 10 is an easier number to add on to other numbers than 12 is. So I have 35 plus
12 was my original question. And I broke my 12 into 10 and two. So then I'm thinking 35
plus 10 is 45. And I have that number in my head. And I remember that I have my two other
my two extras, because my original number was 12. So from there, you can do 45 and count
on 454647. Or you might just know that five and two is seven. If you're familiar with
your smaller number pairs, the numbers that make up seven, the numbers that make up eight,
the numbers that make up nine, use that information to get the answer. So from there, you've broken
apart the numbers, you've really been able to manipulate the numbers in your brain to
solve this addition problem. And that's something that I know personally, I never really did.
It wasn't until I took a class as a teacher about developing number sense, did I even
really start to think about that like manipulating numbers in my head to solve questions like
that was never something that I naturally did. And it's so helpful teaching your students,
especially when they're young, to see numbers as things that are flexible things that can
be switched around compensated, it starts to create just a giant world of possibility
around numbers, which is something that a lot of people who are not traditionally in
air quotes math people don't realize that you can do math can seem very rigid. And it
has to be like this, because there's only one right answer. But the creativity comes
in being able to dive into the different ways that you might get to that answer. And growing
up for me, the emphasis was always on did you get the right answer? Not how can you
approach this problem in a way that makes sense to you. So then you can solve it and
get the right answer without having to use a standard algorithm, just really understanding
numbers and understanding math. So I hope that I have convinced you, or at least started
to convince you that subitizing is a very, very important skill for your students to
develop. And it can be a really fun skill to practice throughout your entire math block.
So next, I'm going to give you some ideas of ways that you can include subitizing activities
in your math block that your students might really enjoy. One of my favorite ways to use
subitizing in the classroom is like I said before, just using dice. So using games with
dice, there's so many different things that you can do with dice and not just traditional
one to six dice, you might use a 10 frame dice or five frame dice. That's another way
for kids to really get to know the way that numbers look. And 10 frames, five frames, even
spinners, if you create a spinner that has a five frame on it 10 frame on it. And using
those things over and over in lots of different types of games is a great way to practice
subitizing. I said a 10 frame if you're unfamiliar with a 10 frame, it's basically a rectangle
with 10 squares in it. So it's five squares on top, five squares on bottom, all together
is a 10 frame. And that's another great way for kids to organize numbers organizing counting
into groups of 10, which is really important in our number system that's based in 10. So
10 frames are a great way to practice subitizing as well with numbers higher than six. Something
else that you can do I like to use this as a warm up or a number sense routine is quick
images. So quick images is like it sounds like you show students an image very quickly
like three seconds tops, and then hide it again. And then your students have to figure
out how many things you were showing. So let's say I had a 10 frame with six items in it.
So five on top and one on the bottom, I'll show my kids my 10 frame with six on it and
then hide it really quickly. And so then the kids would have to talk to me about what they
see. So some kids might say, Oh, I know it's six because I saw the top line was full and
had one extra so five and one extra. If I might arrange my six differently for my next
quick image. So instead of having five on top and one on the bottom, I might do three
on the left and three on the right. And then the kids might say, Oh, I know that that is
six because I saw three and three. You could also switch the colors. So maybe I do three
reds and three yellows. And then they could also see three and three is six. He'd like
some more ideas on how to use quick images. I will leave a link in the show notes to my
free quick image kind of sample quick image freebie that you can use in your classroom.
And that's in Google slides. So you can print off your Google slides or just project it and
show your kids really quick and then hide it again. Now quick images doesn't have to just
be 10 frames. It can also be finger patterns. It can be dice. It can be a wreck and wreck.
It can be tile arrangements. There's lots of different ways that quick images can be
used and what kind of images you show your students. So like I said, I will leave a link
to my quick image freebie in the show notes and a blog post that talks all about quick
images and how can you you can use them in your classroom. I mentioned it briefly before,
but using dice in your classroom is a great way to practice subitizing. Again, if you'd
like some more specific examples of games that you can play to practice subitizing,
I'll have pictures and ideas all linked in the blog post that is in the show notes of
this episode. So quick recap.
Subitizing is a amazing skill to help your students develop number sense. You can use
subitizing in your math block as a warm up. You can use it as a kind of wrap up to the
end of your math block or use the thing that some of the tools like 10 frames dice finger
patterns in your math stations or math centers to reinforce the skill. Get your kids familiar
with all different kinds of number patterns and then they can move from the very concrete
to conceptual understanding of numbers as they move throughout the year on your way.
Don't forget to check out the quick images freebie and the accompanying blog post to
see all of this written out as well as pictures of some games that you might like to play
with your students in their centers. I do love talking about math, obviously, but there
are some things I feel like I just need to share because it was just it's just so comical
like some of the things that these kids do you're just like how that even happened. So
one of my students was working on his drawing. He was so happy to show it to me and he kept
talking about his shoes and I'm like why does he keep telling me about his shoes like I
see their shoes I'm glad you added the detail but move away from the shoes. So I look at
him a little bit later and I was like, hmm, he has two different shoes on today. And I
was like, oh, maybe that's why he kept telling me about his shoes because he had two different
shoes on. I was like, oh, wow, well, I mean, there's nothing we can do about that now like
you're at school we can't change your shoes. I look a little closer. How about they're
both the left foot. So not only did you have two different shoes on, but they were both
the left foot. And I was like, well, it makes sense. He was talking about his shoes. They're
probably uncomfortable. Like I don't even I don't even know how that happened. But I
will say, I have walked out the house in slippers before only to have to turn around and be
like, I need to put real shoes on. So I guess it happens to the best of us. If you have
been enjoying the podcast, I would love it if you left a review or sent me a message to
let me know what episodes you'd like to hear in the future. Until then, I will see you
next time and don't forget to get your freebie on the way out.