Chapter 2 in Connecting Mathematics offered many new insights about number sets. This chapter discussed how children in elementary school understand numbers and counting. Some concepts that were discussed were; set theory, one-to-one correspondence, cardinal numbers, basic operations, and Venn diagrams. A new concept that I learned from reading this chapter is that children must have an understanding of one-to-one correspondence in order to comprehend how to count. For example, if there were three apples and a teacher asked a student to count the apples, the student would have to connect the number “1” to one of the apples and so on until she had reached the third number. This idea develops in a child after they learn how to count orally. Usually …show more content…
A number is best taught by using set theory. This is why one can effectively teach students to understand numbers by counting and one-to-one correspondence. It is also important for the child to recite number in the exact order; a lot of children can confuse the order of numbers. Sets describe a collection of numbers and they help children understand numbers. Instead of introducing children to every single number available, sets help children understand small amounts of numbers and then based on how many is in the sets, their knowledge of numbers expands. I recall in grade school how I learned the numbers 1-10 first and then I gradually kept going higher and higher. I do not remember learning numbers through one-to-one correspondences; however, I do remember learning them through counting aloud. The idea of sets helped me learn that there can be a collection of numbers in which to count. This chapter also discussed the difference between cardinal and ordinal numbers. Cardinal numbers describe the quantity, and ordinal numbers describe the order. Cardinal numbers relate to what I am currently learning about in Math