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Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Compass PD Podcast with Dr. Carrie Hepburn
Episode 57: Quick Count, Big Impact: Subitizing in Early Math
In this engaging episode of the Compass PD Podcast, Dr. Carrie Hepburn and Dr. Sherri Lorton delve into subitizing—a key skill in early math education that builds strong number sense and enhances mental computation. Discover the difference between perceptual and conceptual subitizing, practical ways to develop these skills in young learners, and tips for overcoming common challenges. This episode equips educators with evidence-based strategies to help their students excel in foundational math.
Hello and welcome to the Compass PD podcast, where we explore evidence-based practices and research-driven strategies that empower educators and leaders to make a lasting impact. I'm Dr Keri Hepburn, your host alongside my really good friend and colleague, dr Sherry Lorden. Hi, sherry.
Speaker 2:Hi Keri, I'm excited to be here today.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to have you too. What many people probably don't know is that we have known each other for oh my gosh, what do you think?
Speaker 2:over a decade, oh, more than that, I think Do you think it's been two. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:So Sherry and I worked together. She was my math coach. So she was a math coach Well, she was a teacher. She was a teacher, so know that. And then she moved into the math coaching role and she was my math coach when I was in the classroom. And then she was curriculum, in the curriculum department, a curriculum leader. And then when I moved into the she, she pulled me in alongside her and she worked. She used to be in charge of everything when it was an elementary and then they let her have a partner and she brought me in and I get to do ELA and social studies and she worked on math and science.
Speaker 1:So so much of what I've learned in curriculum and instruction and assessment is because of Dr Lorton. So I'm super excited that she is joining us and that she is part of our Compass PD team, also being one of our authors of our Comprehensive Standards Guide. So she comes to us with decades of experience and just so much wisdom and passion for the work that she does. We are today talking about subitizing. This might not be something that everyone has heard of, but I will tell you, after listening to Dr Lorton, you are going to be. Your knowledge is going to be increased and you're going to be really motivated to make sure you, your children, your personal children and your students can all subitize. One of the things I want to say is whether you're a teacher, administrator or a district leader, our goal is to provide you with insights and tools that help you navigate the complexities of education and inspire student success.
Speaker 1:So today, with Dr Lorton, we're going to discuss the importance of subitizing. She's going to define it, she's going to provide research for us so that we can hear about why subitizing should be happening in our elementary classrooms. She'll be talking about different types of subitizing perceptual and conceptual and their progressions, and Dr Lorton, then, will wrap up the topic by sharing predictable problems teachers and students will face along the way, with some ways to overcome them. So we are really excited to kick this off. So, dr Lorton, let's kick this off. What is subitizing and why is it important?
Speaker 2:So subitizing is the ability to quickly determine the number of objects in a group without counting them, and often that's by utilizing patterns. The word subitize is actually like many of the words in the English language. It is of Latin origin and it means to arrive suddenly. Language it is of Latin origin and it means to arrive suddenly. There's a lot of benefits for students being able to subitize, including development of number sense through recognizing patterns, saving time when counting and understanding connecting numbers and the counting sequence. And we know that proficiency in subitizing also correlates with knowledge of the number system and calculation skills. It's usually done in early years of school, but it can also be helpful in the upper elementary grades for efficient mental computation when we get to larger numbers. And I know that that word itself may not be familiar to those outside of education or even those in education in the upper grade levels.
Speaker 2:But we as adults use subitizing regularly. When you play games with dice or cards or you play dominoes, you typically know the number based on the arrangement of the dots or the symbols, and so as adults we don't count up to know that there are six dots on a die. We just know it when someone shows all five fingers on their hand. You don't need to count them to know that there are five fingers.
Speaker 2:Research by Douglas Clements has shown that when students are able to subitize numbers to four by the age of five, their likelihood in success for math in future years increases. And of course we know that early success in math is the best predictor of future success in school in all subject areas, not just in math. When we develop that number sense in early grades, teachers often use five frames and 10 frames and double 10 frames and fingers to represent numbers that are quickly identifiable. These are all examples of subitizing being used in the classroom. Once students have foundational number sense, teachers often continue to use those same organizers when they're encouraging students to compose and decompose numbers. That helps advance addition and subtraction skills, which is actually part of conceptual subitizing, which we're also going to talk about today. And then also in the upper grades, arrays are often used for addition and subtraction, as well as multiplication and division.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this sounds really important, as I'm listening to you, because some things are kind of sticking out to me. First of all, you were talking about like it's a great predictor of success in math, and then it starts as early as four. Is that what I heard?
Speaker 2:Interestingly, they believe that students as young as six months are actually able to subitize based on research that they have done, so really can start. I mean, usually they can tell the difference, they understand one, three. You know not necessarily the number, the concept of the number, but they can. They kind of know more and less than they can recognize. So really, those young students, they can't count yet but they are subitizing.
Speaker 1:That is so interesting. It makes me think about what I can do with my grandson, who's two and a half years old, like right now. He's already doing like a little bit of counting. You know, just thinking through that, it's just so powerful what the human brain can do and how young we can start doing this. I loved how you explained to us the concept of subitizing too. I loved your concrete explanations of like how we use it as adults with dice and cards. Already these are things that are happening, but in classrooms we're using it in different ways as well, with the tens frames and the fives frames. I think that helps us just get a better grasp. Can we talk a little bit about perceptual and conceptual subitizing, like what is that and what that, how they progress? Tell us some something about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so perceptual subitizing is the ability to recognize up to five objects without counting them. For example, if there are three apples in a bowl, adults, as well as children, who are already able to conceptualize the number three, can tell you that there are three without really taking the time to count them. So typically up to five objects can be subitized quickly without having to count, starting with lower numbers and working our way up, which you know, as adults we think. Well, those are all small numbers. But when you're talking about younger children toddlers and preschool age children, you know we start with one to three and then build on four and then five, and usually young children around two and a half to three years of age, even though they're able to count to 10, they can recite four and five, but they don't always have the ability to subitize those quantities. So that typically happens around the age of four.
Speaker 2:Being able to use perceptual subitizing for numbers one to three begins around six months and up until around three years of age, and then by the time they are four, they have the ability to often be able to recognize four and five. We do see an increase in response time how quickly they can identify the number in a set in between the ages of four and six. So that ability continues to become more automatic and quicker. And we also know that there is an increase in response time for children and adults when objects are arranged in patterns versus randomly placed, or if there are no distractors present, like, for example, find the number of dots, but then there's also X's there. So that will slow down our ability to be able to recognize and subitize. It doesn't mean we can't do it, it just those distractors can slow it down. And then it's probably important to note that students who still struggle with that perceptual subitizing of numbers up to five beyond second grade may have some deeper concerns worth investigating.
Speaker 1:So up to second grade, we want to investigate. As you were talking, I was just I'm writing myself some notes here. As you were talking, a couple of things were like going through my mind. One thing is students that I had in the past that I'm thinking, oh, I wish I would have known the importance and the value of this, as I'm thinking about a couple of kids that just really struggled and something that I was thinking, as you were talking about how it saves time, helps them with that, helps with fluency, all of those things I'm going. Oh, I wish I would have had this knowledge earlier, because, being a second grade teacher and being a third grade teacher, had we known and understood this, we might have investigated something differently. Which then leads me to the podcast that was last week or two weeks ago on dyscalculia, dyscalculia, right, yes, dyscalculia, thank you. Okay, thank you for that. So I apologize for interrupting. We can keep moving with conceptual. This is so fascinating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so really, like I said, perceptual it's really about five or less. Even as adults we can typically only very quickly subitize up to about five objects. After that, a lot of times what our brain does is it takes multiple patterns and puts them together and that's conceptual subitizing. So that's recognizing small subsets within a set of six or more objects and then combining those subsets to recognize the total number, things like using 10 frames. When teachers use those 10 frames they encourage a variety of skills to be used together. So kids are subitizing, they're counting, and then sometimes they're even using some addition in there. So that skill is used in combination sometimes with other skills.
Speaker 1:Once you reach that level of conceptual subitizing, that's a lot of skills that they're putting together when they get to that. So they're starting to even do like I don't want to say. I want to say like more sophisticated, complicated types of math. Aren't they sophisticated, complicated types of math, aren't they? When they're adding all of those different, the conceptual subitizing, the patterns, the adding, the subtracting, all of those things that you were talking about.
Speaker 2:Yes, for sure there's, you know, just like in any other subject area, I think there's, there's a combination of skills that have to be, you know, done together in order to fully comprehend the topic or have a true understanding of the topic.
Speaker 1:What are some like strategies or tips that can be helpful?
Speaker 2:strategies or tips that can be helpful. We know that most math should be taught through experiences and investigating numbers and patterns, but subitizing absolutely requires this. You can't really tell a student how to subitize. It has to be experienced by them. So it's really for a teacher providing those experiences or for a parent who wants to introduce this idea as well, it's really just providing those opportunities where students see numbers and patterns, and in different ways. The focus has to be on the process, especially when we get to the conceptual subitizing stage. You know teachers and parents can start with, of course, perceptual subitizing. So we're talking about groups of one, two and three.
Speaker 2:Many teachers use fingers, five frames, cards with pictures of dots or other basic shapes, tallies, common arrangements that are shown on dice or dominoes. These are all the different ways. Whenever I say like a variety of ways to show some of these numbers, that's what I mean Really being able to allow students to see it in many ways so that their concept of the number and concept of numbers is fully developed and it's flexible. They don't believe that it can only be three if it's arranged this way. They understand that it's still three if you see three tally marks, or you see three fingers or you see three dots. If you see three dots arranged in a row, or you see three tally marks, or you see three fingers or you see three dots. If you see three dots arranged in a row, or you see three dots arranged like a triangle, they all mean three. So it's important for us to help our students understand that there's multiple ways that you can see that number you know.
Speaker 2:Ideally you show the arrangements of the numbers quickly, like two seconds is usually good. You can show your fingers, then put them down, or go to a fist, flash a card and put it down, use slides and advance to a blank slide after two seconds. There are a lot of ways to do that, depending on the materials that you have available to you. Once students are able to show proficiency in subitizing one, two and three, then you want to extend to groups of one, two, three, four and five, so that you are realizing the full level of that perceptual subitizing. And that's of course when we move into that. Conceptual subitizing is beyond five. So you do that in a similar way. You begin with smaller numbers and smaller groupings, but the important part of the conceptual subitizing is making sure to ask students to explain how they saw their groupings Process is the most important part when you're moving into that, even more than the answer itself Right now and I was just thinking about as, as you were chatting, I was just thinking about like this is something we can't rush.
Speaker 1:We have to make sure that they when I heard you say they need a variety of ways, they need lots of. You said they need we need to provide them experiences where subitizing is required I think about myself when I was in the classroom and there were times where I would think like I'll just rush my way through this or I'll skip it because I don't have time, because the and I will tell you this was when I was in the classroom and the classroom has more demands than it's ever had. So I can only imagine what teachers are thinking right now. But as you were talking through it, you were like this can only be through experience and it has to be. They have to see the numbers in multiple ways.
Speaker 1:So my brain got me to thinking about another podcast for you and I and I was thinking about how much fun it could be. I could see. You know, I just was in a school district and we had a fire drill and you know how you're standing there and you're trying to think of ways to keep kids like entertained in the area Like how much fun could it be to have like little subitizing game or something that they could play in practice when you're sitting there, and then they could, in that little group in their line, they could explain their groupings and their thinking and how they came to their answer. It would be a super easy way to just add this in. Or if you're waiting at the bathroom or you're waiting for specials, or you're standing in line at the recess or whatnot. This is not something that has to require a lot of stuff or a lot of planning, like you want to intentionally make sure it's happening, but we could practice it fairly simply, right? Is that what I'm hearing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it really doesn't take a lot of time. You don't need to take a lot of time with it. Just a, you know, a couple minutes you know three or four times a week is enough to really start to help students see those numbers and to be able to subitize effectively and efficiently. Um, subitize effectively and efficiently, um, so it doesn't take a lot of time, even though it does feel like something additional. Um, like you said, there are ways to fit it in because you could do it in just two to five minutes. Uh, whenever you have a little bit of extra time in your day.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Okay, we could talk for days, but I know we can't, so let's talk about some predictable problems and solutions that teachers will face when it comes to the subitizing.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So from what I have been seeing and hearing from teachers and seeing myself, we know that there are students that are maybe not all students, but some students are growing up playing fewer games with dice or cards or dominoes. At home, as it seems we've been going to a lot more virtual or devices for our games and our children often have that exposure, but they may not have exposure with actual dice and cards and dominoes, which is originally how many of us begin subitizing. So we might have to provide some exposure to these at school so that they can begin to develop that. You know, it's just one of the many kind of, how I said earlier, you've got to expose them to those arrangements of those numbers in many different ways. So it's just another way to show those numbers, just another way to show those numbers.
Speaker 2:Another thing that you could run into in the classroom is students trying to count the numbers and what we want them to be able to do is to see them quickly and to just automatically know, and that really does just take exposure. The best way to do that is just to use those quick image strategies that I talked about earlier, whether it's, you know, flashing a card and putting it down, showing your fingers and putting it down, document camera or a PowerPoint presentation, a presentation of some kind. Then you can quickly advance to the next slide. It's usually two seconds is what we want for subitizing. They also always using the same images or the same configurations can also be a stumbling block. We want to make sure to expose our students to many different ways of seeing those numbers. Change it up, use those dice patterns, use tally marks. Five frames, 10 frames, fingers, pictures of fingers all of those different things, wow.
Speaker 1:So here's what I learned today Subitizing is really important. It's a key predictor in success for math and it starts young, as early as six months, which blew my mind, okay. And then we need to provide students multiple ways to practice subitizing and there are a lot of things that we can do that are really simple, and we can add these kinds of experiences subitizing experiences throughout our day in a variety of ways, and it's going to probably be more critical that we do that now than ever, because kids aren't playing with as many games, dice, cards, those kinds of things as they used to. We will need to likely provide a strong foundation, especially in early childhood, and moving them up for those experiences. So I really hope that for those of you that are listening, you are as inspired as I am, because I'm really excited to just pull out the board games and the dice and the cards and start just playing little games with my two and a half year old grandson. But I've got ways and other things that I'm thinking about that, how I could add it even in English language arts and in the work that I'm doing with kids there. We would love to hear your thoughts and your experiences with subitizing.
Speaker 1:We really hope that you found today's episode valuable. Please consider sharing it with a colleague who might benefit from this message. Thank you so much, sherry. We were so thankful to have you. This was really fun. Next week we get to explore feedback and we're going to have some very special guests, so you definitely want to tune in for that one as well. Thanks for joining us at Compass PD on the podcast Remember. At Compass PD, we believe that every educator has the power to inspire, change and transform student learning. Stay focused, stay inspired and keep making a difference.