Developmental+Perspective

**Developmental Perspective**

"There is substantial evidence that counting is a natural human endeavor and that children in their early months are able to discriminate, for example, one object from two objects" (Wall, pg 14). A Yale study, [|found here] discovered that babies who look at certain objects for a longer period of time than other objects are counting. It is known that a 5-month old can determine numbers and group them into collective entities. Obviously, toc  there are limitations as to how far infants are successful in this matter.

Ordinality
Ordinality is the order in which a number arrives.By the time that children are two or three, they can begin to compare two groups of objects. Around the time that they are four or five, however, they are able to gain a sense of ordinality. Thus, children are able to conceptualize numbers in an orderly fashion and begin to understand that by applying ordinality to count up, they are increasing the number of objects that they have. Why it may not seem like a big feat, understanding the abstract idea of a number versus the physicality of the objects is a crucial first step in gaining a deeper understanding of numbers.

A Deeper Look at Ordinality:
Wall provides an example as to how and why ordinality is important in number and mathematics comprehension. The following scenario was presented on page 14 of the book, //Number Theory for Elementary School Teachers//:

**" Five year old Peter is playing with some cars as Ms. Jannat approaches. She has a tin canister in her hand, and she sits beside him on the floor, shes asks, "Do you know what I have in the can?" Peter shakes his head and Ms. Jannat says "Candies." She takes the lid from the canister and tilts the container towards Peter, saying "How many do you think there are?" Peter looks into the can and, carefully touching each of the wrapped candies (not an easy task) he counts, "One, two, three, four, five, six." Ms. Jannat smiles and pours the candies out on the floor near the cars. One candy falls behind a car. She says "Are you sure?" Peter moves the candy that has fallen behind the car so it is together with the rest, and he counts again. He then lines the candies in a column--the two blue candies are at the top--and he as he counts, he tags each candy with a number, "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven." "How many?" Ms. Jannat asks. Peter begins to count, "One, two, three." He hesitates and then he says, "seven."**

**Activity: **
As a group, **brainstorm** some reasons why Peter counting the candies is a crucial developmental step! If students do not fully grasp ordinality by the time they reach the middle school or high school, what concepts will they have problems with!?

Here is a graphic organizer and an instructions to use the graphic organizer with this activity:  : this is the graphic organizer : these are the instructions