The article, by Professor Tim Jay of Sheffield Hallam University and independent researcher Dr Julie Betenson, confirms what parents have long felt instinctively — that the sorts of finger games children often play at home are central to their education<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The researchers worked with 137 primary pupils aged between six and seven. All the children were given different combinations of counting and number games to play — but only some were given exercises which involved finger-training.<\/p>\n Some pupils played games involving number symbols, such as dominoes, shut-the-box, or snakes and ladders.<\/p>\n Other pupils were asked to play finger games: such being asked to hold up a given number of fingers, or numbering fingers from 1 — 5 and then having to match one of them by touching it against the corresponding finger on the other hand, or tracing coloured lines using a particular finger.<\/p>\n Both these groups did a little better in maths tests than a third group of pupils who had simply had ‘business as usual’ with their teachers. But the group which did both the counting and the finger games fared significantly better<\/strong>.<\/p>\n “This study provides evidence that fingers provide children with a ‘bridge’ between different representations of numbers, which can be verbal, written or symbolic<\/strong>. Combined finger training and number games could be a useful tool for teachers to support children’s understanding of numbers,” Professor Jay said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Frontiers press release: Is it OK for children to count on their fingers? Generations of pupils have been discouraged by their teachers from using their hands when learning… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[319],"tags":[45,18,73,19,460,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21924"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21924"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22148,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21924\/revisions\/22148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Numbers.jpg\")
Is it OK for children to count on their fingers? Generations of pupils have been discouraged by their teachers from using their hands when learning maths. But a new research article, published in Frontiers in Education<\/em> shows using fingers may be a much more important part of maths learning than previously thought<\/strong>.<\/p>\n