Number Line Hop
Slide the marker to the right spot on the line.
For grown-ups
- How long: 5 to 10 minutes is plenty. Short and frequent beats long and occasional — the early-numeracy trials with the largest effects ran eight weeks or less.
- The strategy to reinforce: “Use the middle” — Find the halfway mark first, then decide if your number is before or after it. If they stall, remind them of this rather than giving the answer.
- When they get one wrong: the page shows the working. Read it together rather than moving straight on. Feedback that explains is worth several times more than feedback that only marks right or wrong, and that gap is wider in maths than in any other subject.
- On the timer: it is off unless you turn it on, and it is never needed. Use it only once the skill is comfortable, never to introduce it.
- Print it too: doing the same problems on paper a few days later is worth more than doing twice as many today.
What this practises
Estimating where a number sits on a 0–20 line.
Linear number line practice is among the best-evidenced early number interventions there is — Siegler and Ramani’s work on linear board games showed gains in numerical magnitude that transferred to broader arithmetic. Ticks are provided at this stage so the child can count as well as estimate.
- The underlying idea
- Number line estimation: mapping a numeral onto a spatial position.
- Where this sits in Illustrative Mathematics
- 1st grade Unit 4: Numbers to 99 · 1st grade Unit 6: Length Measurements Within 120 Units
- Sources
- Institute of Education Sciences / What Works Clearinghouse (2021) · Schneider et al. (2018) · Siegler et al. (2009) all references →
Related measured skill: MagPI · Number line estimation. What this means