The trouble with three

I noticed a really interesting thing when I was working with Ebony Rose in the Colouring In lesson.

She has a real problem with ‘three’.

As you’ll have worked out if you’ve read the post and considered the problem I set, the children have to colour in different amounts of squares. There are only two choices – when you come to a new colour you’ll either colour one of each square next to the old squares, or you’ll colour three squares. That’s the choice: one square, or three squares.

But Ebs has a real problem with three.

She could cope with all the ones. She could see that each old square would generate one new one, but every time we came to one that would make three squares she froze. If I wasn’t watching here, she would just blithely colour in a single square, even though three were required. And then when I was talking her through it, and getting her to talk it back to me it was like she didn’t want to even say the word three – whenever we came to it, it was like she was trying to out-wait me – to see who would crack first before saying the word three.

It became really hard work. The fact is that during the activity you have to colour in three squares lots of times – she wanted to progress and do well, but she didn’t want anything to do with the number three. I begun to believe that she had some kind of ‘three’ phobia – as if she thought it was cursed or out to get her or something.

Over the weeks since then I’ve begun to understand why: Ebony-Rose often confuses the ‘3’ digit with the ‘5’ digit. Show her ’50’ and she may say “thirty”. Show her ’13’ and she may say “fifteen”.

I remember last year when I was working with a child who, at the age of seven, couldn’t reliably count to ten (or for that matter in tens to 100). By ‘reliably’ I mean she could do it, but 4 out of 10 times, she would get it wrong. When I listened to her count I noticed that she didn’t like pronouncing the ‘f’ in five or fifty: she found it awkward to say. So instead of saying it she would just move swiftly on to six or sixty. We worked for  a few weeks on this reliability and (this academic year) her year 4 teacher tells me she is flying in maths.

Imagine being ten and trying to do maths when you can’t reliably differentiate between a ‘3’ and a ‘5’.

Now I know there may be lots of excuses I could throw at Ebony-Rose at this time  – dyslexia, dyscalculia and all of that stuff. But the excuses aren’t going to help me this week or next week. I need to teach her know how to diferentiate between those two digits. I need to get her confident at knowing ‘the threeness of three’ and give her practice at using threes.

Who knows, she may even master the 3 times table by half term…

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