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Post by Judy on Nov 30, 2020 8:40:40 GMT
A couple of weeks ago in our zoom chat, Peter was asking if anyone uses a vertical number line, rather than a horizontal one. What are your thoughts on this and on number lines generally?
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Post by Katherine Bishop on Dec 3, 2020 3:06:07 GMT
I think that is a very interesting idea. I wonder if that might get confusing when students are introduced to a Cartesian plane and have to do horizontal as well. Perhaps by then the concept will be clearer and it could be less a potential confusion for students.
I think number lines are quite abstract, and a Year 2 student I work with has a lot of trouble with these. She needs a lot of prompting - it is certainly not intuitive or even logical for her.
The Australian Curriculum currently says that by the end of Year 1 students should be able to locate a number 1 to at least 100 on a number line. I will be checking with the lower primary teachers I work with how many students can do this and what difficulties they encounter.
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Post by Judy on Dec 15, 2020 11:09:07 GMT
I think that is a very interesting idea. I wonder if that might get confusing when students are introduced to a Cartesian plane and have to do horizontal as well. Perhaps by then the concept will be clearer and it could be less a potential confusion for students. I think number lines are quite abstract, and a Year 2 student I work with has a lot of trouble with these. She needs a lot of prompting - it is certainly not intuitive or even logical for her. The Australian Curriculum currently says that by the end of Year 1 students should be able to locate a number 1 to at least 100 on a number line. I will be checking with the lower primary teachers I work with how many students can do this and what difficulties they encounter. That seems quite a big ask for year 1 - I do wonder what the obsession with number lines is all about! |
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Jenny
Junior Member
Posts: 50
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Post by Jenny on Dec 15, 2020 18:52:37 GMT
Interestingly today, I was working with a Year 6 child on addition and subtraction with negative numbers. I began by assuming that she would want to use a vertical number line but she insisted that she wanted to use a horizontal one. This then worked well with bar models which she is used to drawing as horizontal boxes.
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Post by Katherine Bishop on Dec 28, 2020 4:42:17 GMT
I just listened to the video of Daniel Ansari at Univ Western in Canada talk about the numerical distance effect. He used the analogy of the number line a lot.
I am wondering if that is so we could connect to the difficulty that dyscalculics have or if there were other reasons he refers to that so much. He was saying that dyscalculics have more overlapping representations on "their number line". I am not sure whether he was suggesting that was how a dyscalculic person would visualise it.
Why not talk about the overlap effect by looking at size of circles of varying sizes ie one shape that is larger than another and represents something 'bigger' or perhaps of larger quantity to represent size of a number rather than position on a number line?
Just some thoughts that came up as I listened to him use that example throughout that video.
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Post by Judy on Jan 15, 2021 16:31:10 GMT
Thanks for that Katherine- I am a big fan of Daniel's and will have a look at that video.
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