Questions about Tap & Tally 50-51
Q: Is Tap & Tally™ research based?
A: Yes. Virtually all research on learning styles and on teaching math to elementary school students that has anything to do with numerousness and counting support Tap & Tally™.
Q: Is Tap & Tally™ classroom tested?
A: Hugely so! Through private consulting and state and federally funded projects, MOVE IT Math™ has directed the implementation of Tap & Tally™ in thousands of elementary school and middle school classrooms in California, New York, Texas, and other states. Innovative Learning Concepts, the distributor of TouchMath, has placed TouchMath materials in elementary school classrooms in all 50 states.
Q: Will Tap & Tally™ hamper my students’ future learning?
A: No. Tap & Tally™ is based on counting, and research on children’s counting substantiates it as a basis for understanding arithmetic and performing it mentally (Resnick 1983; Steffe et al. 1983). Moreover, counting may contribute to the formation of the sort of “imagined” sensory-motor activity that appears to play an important role in mathematical problem solving at the high school and college level (Cobb 1985).
Q: Is Tap & Tally™ easy to implement?
A: Yes. To figure out all 390 number facts, children need know only the Tap & Tally™ numerals and how to count forward to 18, backward from 18, and skip count by 2s, 3s, 4s, ... , 9s. This book includes numerous games and activities for teaching the Tap & Tally™ numerals and a smorgasbord of songs, rhymes, and a list of children’s books for teaching the needed counting skills.
References
Avesar, Charlotte, and Donald J. Dickerson. 1987. Children’s judgment of relative number by one-to-one correspondence: A planning perspective. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 44: 236–254.
Carpenter, Thomas P., and James M. Moser. 1984. The acquisition of addition and subtraction concepts in grades one through three. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 15(3): 179–202.
Cobb, Paul. 1985. Mathematical actions, mathematical objects, and mathematical symbols. Journal of Mathematical Behavior 4: 27–134.
Frank, Alan R. 1989. Counting skills—A foundation for early mathematics. Arithmetic Teacher 37(1): 14–17.
Fuson, Karen. 1984. More complexities in subtraction. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 15(3): 214–225.
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