Developing Number Sense in Your 1st Grade Classroom
Developing our young learners' Number Sense is critical. Did you know that a student's early mathematical skills has been found to be one of the best indicators of future success in school and predictor of high school graduation!? So, yes, building our students' Number Sense is THAT important!
There are so many ways to help students develop Number Sense. For this page, let's focus on the idea of using number lines.
Using Number Lines to Develop Number Sense
Every classroom should have a number line displayed that is used throughout the day to build an understanding of the relationships among numbers. I know wall space is at a premium, but try to hang your number line in a place that is visually accessible to students (not too high and not behind students). We often forget that our adult brains have had many years of experience with numbers and number relationships and we forget that most of those things that we, as adults, "just know" are not actually "known" by our students because they have not had enough experience with them, yet. Using a number line provides a simple support to help students begin to understand some of those relationships.
