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Number Sense Through Dot Patterns and Ten Frames

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Elementary School Strategy

Skills

Number Sense Through Dot Patterns and Ten Frames

If your student is struggling to develop number sense

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Use dot patterns and five or ten frames for students to develop visual images of numbers up to 10 to develop understanding of quantity and how number combinations work as they learn math facts.
  2. Class Activity: (a) Pick a number of the day, e.g. 8. (b) Provide students with a dot representation of the number for a few seconds then hide it. Repeat for another quick look. (c) As a class, discuss how many did you see? How did you see it? Get lots of responses. (d) Show the visual again and keep it there. Discuss how different students saw the combinations of dots to get to 8. Discuss all the different combinations students saw. (e) Repeat with a different number(s). Use this exercise repeatedly throughout the year.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

To gain math fact fluency, and general comfort working with numbers, students need to get comfortable thinking flexibly about any number as a combination of other numbers. Hearing peers discuss different ways that you can represent a single number will develop this skill.