I was quite excited by our PD conference last Monday when Jo Boaler talked about finger discrimination.

We had a go in room 13 today. This week I’m doing a series of lessons from her website youcubed.

Firstly apologies for the texta dots on the children’s fingernails today. It was certainly worth it! We had so much fun and are improving our finger discrimination.

We did some finger exercises and tried finger mazes. We ran our of time to play finger twister……. maybe tomorrow!!

I’m hoping the children got you to do some of the finger activities at home tonight.

From Jo Boaler’s website youcubed. If you are interested have a read of the article below.

Research tells us that it is very important for students to develop ‘finger discrimination’ that is, for students
to know their fingers really well. In this Atlantic article I share the importance of using fingers for
the brain’s development of numbers, see http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/whykids-
should-use-their-fingers-in-math-class/478053/. Evidence from both behavioral and neuroscience
studies shows that when people receive training on ways to perceive and represent their own fingers, they
develop better representations of their fingers, which leads to higher mathematics achievement.