Say goodbye to calculators
The return of the abacus helps kids understand counting, adding more fully
By Natalie Dicou, The Salt Lake Tribune Close-Up Staff (October 30, 2008)

They say if you wait around long enough, everything comes back into fashion. Apparently, this includes ancient devices as well as questionable clothing.

The latest en vogue teaching tool: the abacus. Calculators are out; abacuses are in. At least according to Jeanne Pence, a first-grade teacher at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School in Salt Lake City.

Last April, Pence attended the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Conference in Salt Lake City. When she got the list of classes, one of them caught her eye: "Abacus: Not Just a Counting Toy! It's an Amazing Manipulative for Children." Pence attended the workshop and left with a newfound enthusiasm for abacuses. "From the moment we walked into the room, I was just captivated by this beaded abacus," Pence remembered. "The snapping of beads gave instant attention."

In the class, Tomoe Fujimoto and Hiroo Kodama, of Japan, taught Pence and her colleagues about how abacuses help young children - especially visual and kinetic learners - understand counting and adding more fully. "When it's visualized in front of them," Pence said, "it's easy for them to be correct."

Immediately, Pence saw the benefit of using the ancient counting tool in her classroom. The veteran teacher knew she wanted to add an abacus to her repertoire for the next school year, but when she searched online, she found there wasn't a huge market for abacuses that are large enough for an entire classroom of children to see. She needed to build her own.

Remembering that Louis Keating - a St. Vincent dad - and his son, Roger, built a beautiful castle for a school play, Pence enlisted the Keatings help to build a large abacus. Over the summer, the Keatings and their friends and neighbors built a 30" x 30" wooden abacus using 100 golf balls for beads. "I was in awe," Pence said of her initial reaction to the finished product, which was delivered to her classroom in August. "I couldn't believe the work he put into this abacus. When you make it with your hands, it comes from your heart."

Pence uses the abacus in her first-grade class all the time, and the children love it. They've already learned to count and add up to 40. For now, Pence is keeping the bottom six rods of golf balls covered up, but by the end of the year, she predicts her students will be comfortable counting and adding up to 100. "I think it's great that an ancient idea has been successful," Principal Mark Longe said. "It's a really visual way for kids to learn number sets . . . It builds a teacher's bag of tricks."

Teacher's aide Tara McCutcheon works with Pence a couple of days a week. McCutcheon likes the abacus because it's both hands-on and fun. Kids can move the balls and actually see what 10 plus two looks like.

To practice number sets, Pence's first-graders count the balls as their teacher moves them across the rods, sometimes two or three at a time. "Two, four, six, eight, 10," the kids say in unison. Then it gets tougher. "Put on those thinking caps, my smart cookies," Pence tells the youngsters. "Fifteen plus what equals 40?"

Several children raise their hands, and Pence calls on one. "25?" the child responds.

Pence beams. "See how smart they are?" she says.

Photo credit Natalie Dicou, ndicou@sltrib.com