Mathematics 

The Importance of Teaching Subitising

In the beginning stages of number sense, most young children will learn to count by rote, however, it’s the next step in the learning journey that some children struggle with. While these students may sound like they know what they are doing when they are counting out loud, some children don’t always fully understand the meaning behind the numbers they are counting.

Encouraging students to subitise groups of items allows them to develop an understanding of how a number is made up of a collection of items.

The process of subitising can also be used with seeing parts in the whole. For example, in the image below you could encourage a student to group the dots by colours and instantly recognise there are four red dots and two blue dots making a total of six dots altogether.

This understanding of the part-part-whole enables children to separate and combine numbers and is the perfect platform for the understanding of addition and subtraction.

Kindergarten students were doing subitising in their classroom in Week 1. Below you can see some of the activities they were doing.

Some activities you can do at home.

Subitising Rings (1-20)

All you need for this great hands-on activity is a Subitising Rings (which can be made using cardboard) and some wooden pegs.

Write the numerals on each end of the wooden pegs and then encourage your students to match the numeral on the wooden peg to the matching amount of dots on each of the Subitising Rings.

Challenge them by timing how fast they can match the pegs to their correct spots on the ring.

Flash Cards

Make your own flash cards using card and round sticky dots.

Dice Game

Roll a dice and circle the dots. Take turns to roll a standard dice and then circle a set of dots making a group that is the same number as shown on the die.

• A different coloured pen will be needed for each player. 
• If you can’t make a group with the number on your dice, you miss a turn. 
• The winner is the person who has made the most groups at the end of the game.

This activity encourages children to practise subitising with the dice and represent the number shown on the dice in different ways.