Ten Frame Add Builder

About Ten Frame Add Builder

Ten Frame Add Builder shows an addition as two filled ten frames side by side and asks for the total. Two frames rather than one is the entire design decision. When 8 and 5 sit next to each other as counters, a child can see that the first frame is nearly full, that three of the five would finish it, and that what is really being asked is one full ten and three more. That is the same insight our Bridging Ten Bridge game teaches symbolically, and a child who has met it in both a picture and a written form has a far better chance of believing it than one who has only been told. The frames fill along the top row first, which is what makes a quantity readable at a glance rather than countable one dot at a time, and the frames are drawn rather than labelled so that reading them stays the child’s job. The first level keeps both numbers inside a single ten, so the layout is met before the crossing is; from the second level every problem crosses ten, which is where the strategy has to appear. Rows grow from one problem to three so a child works through a small set rather than a single lucky answer. Numbers to place are offered as a short palette, everything is operable by tap or keyboard, every frame announces its count to screen readers, and a wrong placement flashes and can be replaced with nothing lost. Free, no sign-up, no advertising to children, progress kept on the device.