In this book, subitizing and number strategies are now further developed to include rainbow facts, near doubles and near-rainbow facts. Use of the Secret Code and mini-chunking further extends this thinking.

It is crucial that students have fluency and flexibility with number facts to 12 in the first instance and then to 20 as all later operations are built around these. Fluency with these facts will free up working memory to focus on harder sums as well as the thinking required when problem-solving. The variety of activities and games presented here encourage automaticity, which should be reached through understanding of numerical relations, achieved by thinking about number strategies.

As you work with students remember that the brain likes to be curious and learns better when relaxed and having fun. We suggest that you observe students closely so that you can use this book to provide just the right amount of practice and desirable difficulty without overdoing it.

The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics emphasizes the importance of subitizing and Visual Scaffolds supports the teaching of Year 1: ACMNA015, Year 2: ACMNA029 and ACMNA030 and Year 3: ACMNA055.

We have provided a sample from this material to give you a feel for this product. You can download the sample now:

Download Sample

We have also made the changeover from FLASH programs to HTML5 and the next link enables you to check out one of our all-time favourite apps in which you drag the mask down to slowly reveal the cards that it hides and your class try to guess what the cards are before you show them:

Open the Playing Card Masking Program