Whole-Number Place-Value (Number Sense) Concepts in Preschool

According to the MOE curriculum guidelines, for Numeracy skill, Preschool Education is to provide opportunities for children to:

• Understand the concept of one-to-one correspondence
• Understand and use numbers in daily experiences
• Understand the ordinal, nominal, and cardinal aspects of numbers (1-30)
• Understand the concept of additon as combining two groups of objects in small quantities
• Understand the concept of subtraction as taking objects away and find out how many are left or comparing groups of objects to find out the difference between them. 

There is one point in this particular chapter mentioned which brought me upon a realisation, that, children may count "ten, eleven, twelve,....twenty" and so on without realizing the "twenty-ness" of the quantity.  It reminds me to some of my students, whom are able to do rote counting from 1-20 pretty well, but when I asked them further to show me the quantity of such numbers (by giving concrete objects), some of them were not able to do so. They made a few attempts by counting from different direction; beginning, middle, or end. Eventually, they still did not manage to give the quantity accordingly.

After reading on this chapter, I began to see the importance to connect the count by-tens method with their understood method of counting by ones, the children need to count both ways and discuss why they get the same results. Therefore, developing base ten concepts of lesser quantities (perhaps up to 20) is necessary to be included in the Preschool curriculum. 

The role of counting should be further broken down into three stages; counting by ones, counting by groups and singles, and counting by tens and ones. It is insufficient for teachers to tell children that the counts will results for the same quantities. The three stages in counting is important for students, as it is the relationship they must construct themselves through reflective thought. 

I am currently teaching a group of Kindergarten One level. Here are some the objectives of Mathematics Lesson Plan for K1 level: 

• rote counting 1-20 or more
• count realiably, one object at a time up to a collection of 10 or more
• know and show that the quantity of a set up to 10 or more is the "same" irrespective of strating point of counting
• matc up to 10 or more: number names with quantity, number names with numerals, numerals with quantity, number words with quantity, number words with numerals
• use "one more" and "one less" for quantities up to 10 or more
• recognise that the quantity of a set of objects is the same when arranged differently

Those objectives are good foundation in building a number sense, in which I believe would create a smoother transition in teaching whole number place value concepts. 

The three stages of counting; counting by ones, counting by groups and singles, and counting by tens and ones should be further emphasized to teach concept of Numbers, for the Preschool Curriculum Framework.