Programme in Action
Fingers -- An Adding Game.
Participants in a recent workshop for tutors of learners with low numeracy skills learned a game they can use to encourage their learners to move beyond ‘counting all’ and ‘counting on’ strategies to add numbers together.
Tutors learned the game together then took it back to the classroom to try with their learners.
The learners are in pairs and in the same way as for ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ put both hands behind their backs. When the tutor says, “Go,” both learners put one hand out showing some fingers. The first person to call out the total of all fingers is the winner. In the picture the learners are talking about how they did the adding and are discussing their strategies.
The next step in the activity is to put the learners in groups of 3 or 4 and to do this activity again. More fingers to add! With this greater number of people, and fingers, more thinking about strategies like doubling, making 5 and making 10 is required.
The tutor facilitates a discussion about adding strategies.
Two tutors who used this activity with their class emailed this response to the numeracy developer. Thank you to Jude Colville and Joy Taylor.
“Thanks ………… the different responses are very thought provoking! Joy and I have tried the 'hands behind the back, adding game'. There is always lots of laughter. Especially as three of our students have partial digits and one has an entire finger missing. I forgot to ask how they count them. You often hear 4 1/2 etc. We are mainly using the activity for a change of state/wake up towards the end of our day. But they are happy to share strategies and think about how they do things, which is also a skill to recognize.”
Want to read about more numeracy games, click below