Subitizing

Strand: Number
Outcome: 2

Step 1: Identify Outcomes to Address

Guiding Questions

What do I want my students to learn?
What can my students currently understand and do?
What do I want my students to understand and be able to do, based on the Big Ideas and specific outcomes in the program of studies?

See Sequence of Outcomes from the Program of Studies

Strand: Number

Kindergarten

Grade 1

Specific Outcomes
2.	Subitize (recognize at a glance) and name familiar arrangements of 1 to 5 objects or dots.

Specific Outcomes
2.	Subitize (recognize at a glance) and name familiar arrangements of 1 to 10 objects or dots.

Big Ideas

Number sense, which can be thought of as intuition about numbers, is the most important foundation of numeracy. (British Columbia Ministry of Education 2000)

A true sense of number goes well beyond the skills of simply counting, memorizing facts and the situational rote use of algorithms. Mastery of number facts is expected to be attained by students as they develop their number sense. It allows for facility with more complex computations but should not be attained at the expense of an understanding of number.

Number sense develops when students connect numbers to their own real-life experiences, and use benchmarks and referents. This results in students who are computationally fluent, flexible with numbers and have intuition about numbers. The evolving number sense typically comes as a by‑product of learning rather than through direct instruction. However, number sense can be developed by providing rich mathematical tasks that allow students to make connections to their own experiences and their previous learning.