Collection: Maths Counters

• To demonstrate addition. Your students can make two piles of counters, one for each number being added, then put the two together to get the answer.
• To demonstrate subtraction. As above, but they’d take away the number of counters required. Using counters for these simple calculations helps students be confident in their answers and understand the process of adding and subtracting. 
• To clearly show division. Each student would start with the full number in a pile of counters, then break it down into equal piles for the dividing number. This helps students see how division can result in whole numbers. 
• For multiplication. For example, for 3 times 6, you’d have each student count out three piles of six counters, then count all the counters to get the answer. Especially as you get to higher numbers, this approach can help your students keep to the basics without getting overwhelmed. 
• To understand place value. We have a specific place value counter set that means your students can set up whole numbers and decimals and clearly see the place value of each number. The set also includes title cards so your students can match the numbers and words for place values. They’re very colourful too, which makes the whole thing more fun and engaging. Plain counters can also be used with a place value mat. These have values along the top with space below to add your own numbers or counters to understand the place value of each section of the number you’re demonstrating. 

Make Maths Less Abstract with Coloured Counters 

Primary school maths is arguably the most important subject you can teach. As maths is a hierarchical model, you must lay the foundations of a good understanding of the core principles for your students to build on. Whether this is further study, advanced topics like calculus, or real-life applications like dealing with money, the work you put in during their primary years pays off down the line, long after they’ve left your classroom. 

Having this responsibility is rewarding, but we’re sure you’ve also spent some time worried about how best to engage your students in maths lessons. The reason that your students often seem more excited for ‘fun’ subjects like sports or music than these necessary core subjects is that maths involves many abstract concepts. Children struggle to grasp these ideas until the age of around 12, so relying on teaching methods that require your students to picture ideas in their minds isn’t likely to be successful. You’ll likely find your class struggling with the subject matter, so they’ll become frustrated and switch off. By bringing counters into your demonstrations and student tasks, you’ll give your students the ability to see the concepts in action with no picturing in their minds needed. 

We mentioned above how our maths counters can help you demonstrate place value. This concept has many abstract components within it, as you work your way from whole numbers to decimals, so your students can easily get lost. By introducing place value counters, you take the idea from a difficult abstract idea to something they can get involved with and figure out for themselves.

There are many benefits to hands-on maths learning with counters, and they include:

• Using more senses to learn, which ensures you’re covering different learning styles and creating engaging lessons that lead to better recall. 
• Plenty of opportunities to check your students’ understanding before moving on. Getting each student to demonstrate their skills in addition, subtraction, and more with the counters ensures you can see that your lessons have gone in and where there are gaps that you need to go over in more detail.
• It’s easy to adapt to different skill levels. For example, you could split your students into ability groups, and everyone gets counters, but each table gets different calculations to use them on. 

How Our Counters Work with Our Lessons 

We’ve given some examples of how to use our counters here, and in the hundreds of lessons available through our monthly or yearly subscriptions, we go into more detail. Our lessons are in line with the Australian maths curriculum for each primary year group and include detailed plans to save you time, worksheets to test your students’ comprehension, and a video that covers the details of each lesson so you can quickly absorb the information and implement it in your classroom. Fill a basket with counters now, join our subscription to access our detailed lessons, or reach out to our team through our contact form, and they’ll be eager to help.  Read Less