Hmmm….how important is it that our students know how to write numbers in letters?  With my seven-year-olds today we did a class test and I had combined the test from the book with some extra activities.  The “real” test practised sports (receptively through listening and reading and productively through writing) and numbers (receptively through listening).  The extras that I added on asked students to produce the numbers in atypical “write the number: 22 _________________” style.

The students all scored very well on the book test – thankfully, that means they’ve taken on board what we’ve been doing!  The stronger students did their best with the numbers – a couple got excellent marks, most were fairly middling and there were a few shockers in there too.

As I was sitting in the staffroom marking the exams, it suddenly crossed my mind that I rarely write numbers above ten in words in Spanish (or in L1 for that matter) and so I asked my colleagues what they thought.  They agreed – it’s rare to write numbers as words – I think that unless you’re writing a cheque, the number itself will suffice and when was the last time you wrote a cheque?