Introducing Numbers in Beginning Spanish

Leveling the playing field when half of your students can already count to 10

I’ve written quite a bit about why numbers are tricky for language learners and how to introduce them effectively. You can read the details here, but in a nutshell I introduce the numbers in random order and give students many short exposures with TPR. This gives brand new novice speakers a manageable introduction to comprehensible input and starts language study with measurable success and practical content. The approach has worked well for me over the years.

I teach at a school with a large Spanish-speaking population and I’ve noticed of late in my beginning Spanish classes, a lot of kids come in already familiar with the numbers 0-10. This threw me off a bit at first (some of the kids knew the content and were bored, while others needed the repetitive practice and felt intimidated by their peers). I’ve come up with a solution.

“The activity is equally challenging for everyone, and I still achieve my goal of lots of short, interactive practice sessions ”

I start out as usual, calling a number and having students respond by holding up the correct number of fingers. We do this for the numbers from 0-5 until everyone is pretty good at it. This happens quickly.

Then, I jump right into the numbers from twenty to fifty. We represent this with two hands: fingers on the left hand for the tens column and fingers on the right for the ones. (So five on the left and two on the right = 52).

This levels the playing field, since even my high flyers don’t yet know veinte, treinta, cuarenta, & cincuenta. The practice becomes equally challenging for everyone, and I’m still achieving my goal of lots of short, interactive practice sessions with student response.

Of course, it only works up to fifty-five. Later we’ll go back and pick up the higher digits (using whiteboards or another method). But jumping right into double-digits meets all my goals for the activity and sidesteps the problem of students who already know a little Spanish.