This email from a colleague addresses the simple idea that if we teach numbers by themselves, the kids will learn only the numbers. But, if we teach the actual language, our kids will learn both numbers and the rest of the language as well. Here it is:
A second-year kid came in and complained that we hadn’t ever learned the numbers last year. So the next day, I told the class we were going to count. We counted to twenty. Then we counted by tens to a hundred. The next day we counted by hundreds to a thousand. The kid was counting just fine. I asked her, “You know how to count now, right?” and she said, “But you never taught us.” I asked her how she knew. She said she just did. I said that evidently she was a brilliant Russian student, and there was probably lots of other stuff I would never need to teach her. She looked doubtful, but I think she got the point and the compliment.
[ed. note: this is such a serious point. Often, when people start doing CI, they have a nagging feeling that they should be “teaching” something, like the numbers. But, what you have said above is the norm with us – our TPRS kids learn them in the unending flow of language. It is up to each of us to believe that, or, if we don’t, go back and teach the numbers separately as a unit, with the unforunate result that, if they do, their students really won’t learn shit.]
We never lined up to count buttons or anything else last year. I was actually a bit surprised that the second-year kids knew how to count, because I truly had never checked. They also know most of the days of the week, the months, the seasons, and the major weather patterns. But I have never taught them, even though I keep meaning to do something resembling your regular tests. I guess I could spend some time lining up and counting buttons, but we’d miss story time or reading or singing or FVR.
[ed. note: yeah, you could count buttons or teach your language. But you can’t have it both ways.]
Today, I told the number story to my first-year kids and challenged them to count. They can count to ten, and they know a bunch of random numbers, from 1/2 to a thousand to a million. They know some of the teens and a couple of the tens. I’m going to have faith that, by May, they’ll know the important numbers, whatever those are. They all know how old they are, despite the fact that I haven’t asked them that question, unless they told me it was their birthday.