Challenging Our Minds Weblog

Task 3 - Flash Count I (Patterns) - The Flash Count tasks are designed to help one develop a conceptualization of numbers such that a person can quickly and easily recognize how many objects are in a group (up to five objects) without having to count them. Once this conceptualization has been mastered and become automatic, then one should be able to do some of the basic math skills more accurately, quickly and easily. We start out by having the objects grouped into patterns that become easily recognizable. By doing this the association of the number represented by the objects is much more easily learned. There is a variety of patterns for each number group to help with the process of generalizing the number/object perception skill to broader presentations. The skills acquired here will undergo further development in Track 3 - Task 4 - Flash Count II (Random) where the student is required to automatically perceive numbers of objects without the aid of the patterns.

Task 2 - Attributes and Groups - This task uses the objects and conceptual information from Task 1 where you learned that objects have color, shape, size and number attributes. For this task, however, you must use that information to put the objects into groups. All of the objects in a group must have something (i.e. color, shape, size or number of objects) that is the same. The catch is that all of the objects must be arranged in the grid so that they are placed in multiple (more than one) group at the same time. For Level 1, one set of groups will be contained in the rows and a second set of groups will be contained in the columns. For example, all the objects in the rows might be grouped by shape. Row 1 could be squares, Row 2 circles etc.. At the same time the columns could be grouped by color so that all the objects in Column 1 could be red while all the objects in Column 2 could be blue. For each time you do this, carefully study the objects before you start dragging them to the answer grid so you can decide how to arrange them first. For Level 2 and 3, the way you do the task is pretty much the same, there are just more objects, more groups and more concepts (color, shape etc) that you will have to take into account. In addition to Column groups and Row groups, Levels 2 and 3 also have Quadrant (Corner) groups.

Task 1 - Basic Attributes - If you describe the objects aloud, you will help yourself learn about the different characteristics or attributes of the objects. To get you started - some of the objects are red, some yellow, some blue etc.. So, one of the characteristics or attributes of the objects is Color. Now you take it from there. If you get stuck just start describing the objects aloud to yourself again and listen to what you are saying.