Written & Submitted by Michael Frankfort @mfrank_76
Have you ever been told not to count with your fingers? Maybe this happened when you were a student or even now when you are an adult. Is counting with your fingers ‘wrong’ in some way? You can get to the answer in a way that works best for you and as good instructional pedagogy tells us, it is not about the product or the performance, but the path and journey that you took to get there.
In terms of counting with your fingers for Mathematics, I came across these two great videos, which dive a little deeper into this potential ‘controversy’. The first is from Howie Hua (Twitter @howie_hua) which features him discussing counting with your fingers, he provides some validation and information. The second video comes from James Tanton via TedEd, where he discusses how high can we count with our fingers. Check out the links below.
New TikTok video: You can absolutely count on your fingers pic.twitter.com/YEP6WsKvP3
— Howie Hua (@howie_hua) January 28, 2022