Counting By Ten Shows Sophistication.

I recently came across an article that looked at how young children are able to count by 10.  Although I do not teach young children, this information is still interesting. When people take time to understand how young children learn to count, it impacts the type of materials used in the classroom. Furthermore, it impacts how those materials are designed to help students develop strategies.

A recent study examined how mostly first graders used a hundreds table to perform age-appropriate tasks for counting.  Upon examination, it was noted that the children who counted in a left to right, top to bottom manner, tended to outperform those who used a left to right and bottom to top method.

The study used two different digital hundreds table.  One was a top down table where one was at the upper left corner and 100 was at the bottom right corner. The other was a bottom up where one appeared at the bottom left corner and 100 was at the top right most corner. One group in the study used the first table, the second group used the second table, and a third group used the bottom to top table but with a small symbol showing that the higher one goes on the table, the higher the values of numbers.

At the end, it was discovered the children who used the top down hundreds table were able to use a more sophisticated strategy of counting by 10's and moving down vertically.  The children who used the bottom up table tended to count by ones and moving horizontally, row by row. 

Researchers speculate that students relate to the top to bottom table better because the movement is to read left to right, up to down.  It was a familiar movement as most of these children are also learning to read at the same time.  The movement was easy to transfer.  

In addition, students who can count by 10 are counting more efficiently than those who counts by one. Researchers are not stating that all children will gravitate towards the left to right top to bottom table but the results will provide teachers with an idea of how their students process numbers and addition.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  have a great day.