Number Rods and Cards

Material

  • A set of (white) cards, with black symbols from 1 to 10 painted on them.
  • Number Rods

Direct Aim

Familiarizing the child with the symbols and relating them to his knowledge of numbers. The activity of fetching and carrying helps to keep his interest alive, and the errand trains him to visualize what he must bring back.  This helps him to fix the symbol in his memory and the “Stair” formation gives him the sequence of the symbols.  The building of tens is an indirect preparation for addition and the putting back of the rods to form the stair again is an indirect preparation for subtraction.  

Pay special attention to all sequencing as dyslexic children have a visual sequential memory weakness adn this makes for later difficulty with learning their tables. Some children can be helped, at this early stage, to gain a stronger development of a weak sequencing memory.

Age:

4+

Control of Error

Counting the partitions.

Teacher’s Presentation

A small group presentation. 

  1. The children are told to place the number rods mixed up on a mat on a table in one corner of the room. 
  2. The teacher places the number cards in any order on a table at the other end of the room.
  3. Bring the children to the number rods, and ask a child to choose a number rod, count it, and then go to the number cards finding the corresponding card. 
    4. If, on the way, the child forgets the number of his rod, let him take the rod with him. 
  4. Ask the other children to do likewise.
  5. The exercise may be reversed – i.e. the child chooses a number card and names it, and then finds the corresponding number rod.  If the child is shown the number 6 rod instead of number 8, she should be shown the number card again – she will name it, count her rod and realize her mistake.

Variations

i) The child places the rod in stair formation at the top left hand side of the mat. The teacher points to a rod, the child counts it and goes to fetch the corresponding number symbol card.  These are placed at the end of each rod.  The child and the teacher then count them in order, forwards and backwards.  This gives the child the sense of sequence of quantity and the symbol.

ii) The teacher takes the number 10 rod and places the number 9 rod next to it. This is a composition of number. She asks the child “Now what number do we need to make that equal to number 10? – Look, number 1 fits very well.”  She then places number 8 rod beside number 9 and says “Now what do we need to make that equal to number 10?”  The child discovers what is needed. Start with another rod, and make up those combinations, and so on, until all the rods have been experimented with. This provides an indirect preparation for multiplication. Putting the rods back into stair formation again is an indirect preparation for subtraction.

iii) The rods may be built into nines:  8+1; 7+2, 6+3, etc..  Eights: 7+1; 6+2, etc.. Sevens, etc..

iv) When the rods have been made up to a number, we may introduce subtraction by taking it away again.