DEVELOPING AN UNDERSTANDING :  The other day I was showing the children's book '203 Cats' to my 7-year-old niece. She had recently learnt how to write large numerals in her school. She, very confidently, looked at the title and read 'Twenty-three Cats'. I asked her to look at the title again and read it to me. She again read 203 as twenty-three.

Then I wrote 2 13 on a piece of paper, and asked her to read this. She read it correctly as two hundred and thirteen. So why couldn't she read 203 properly?

Where did the problem lie ? Could it be that she had never thought about the importance of the position of a digit in a numeral? Or could it be a problem related to her understanding of zero ?

To answer these questions, at least partially, maybe we should go back a bit in time, and see how my niece's teacher had taught her to read and write numerals.