Glossary
Soroban and early numeracy glossary
Every specialist word used on this site, defined plainly. Soroban terms first, then the early childhood frameworks a director works with, then the safety and registration terms worth checking on any provider.
One gold heaven bead worth five, four green earth beads worth one each, and a dark reckoning bar between them.
Terms
The soroban
- Soroban
- The Japanese abacus. Each rod carries one bead above a horizontal bar and four beads below it. The bead above is worth five, each bead below is worth one, and only beads pushed against the bar are counted, so a single rod represents any digit from 0 to 9. Because there is exactly one correct way to build each digit, a soroban teaches a child to see a quantity rather than to count objects. It reached Japan from China around the fourteenth century and settled into this one-and-four form in the 1930s.
- Suanpan
- The Chinese abacus, and the soroban's ancestor. A suanpan has two beads above the bar and five below, so each rod can hold up to fifteen and the same number can be built in more than one way. That flexibility is powerful for an experienced user and is the reason it is harder to learn first. The Japanese simplification to one bead above and four below removed the ambiguity, which is what makes the soroban teachable to a three-year-old.
- Heaven bead
- The single bead above the reckoning bar on each rod, worth five. On a Pibbly soroban it is the gold one. It rests up, away from the bar, and is counted only when pushed down to touch the bar. The name is a translation of the Japanese term for the upper deck. A child who has understood that five is one bead rather than five beads has understood the idea the whole device exists to teach.
- Earth bead
- One of the four beads below the reckoning bar on each rod, each worth one. On a Pibbly soroban they are the green ones. They rest down, away from the bar, and are counted when pushed up to touch it. There are exactly four, never five: five earth beads makes it a Chinese suanpan, and it breaks the one-arrangement-per-digit rule that the Pibbly workbooks are built on.
- Reckoning bar
- The horizontal bar that separates the heaven bead from the earth beads on every rod. It is the reference line: a bead touching the bar is counted, a bead away from it is not. On a Pibbly soroban the bar is thick and dark brown with no rivet, which matters because a bar drawn as a thin silver strip with a rivet is a different instrument in a child's mind, and children copy what they see.
- Rod
- The vertical shaft the beads slide along. One rod holds one digit. A full adult soroban has thirteen or more rods and can represent numbers of that many digits, with place value running right to left exactly as it does in writing. Pibbly uses a single-rod soroban for ages 3 to 6, because one rod is one idea and it removes place value from the picture until a child is ready for it.
- Complementary bead pairs
- The pairs of numbers that add to five, and to ten: four and one, three and two, then nine and one, eight and two, seven and three, six and four. Soroban arithmetic works by substituting one for the other, so adding four becomes adding five and taking away one. These are learned as movements before they are learned as sums. Pibbly does not teach the arithmetic at ages 3 to 6, but the pairs are visible on the beads long before anyone names them.
- Anzan
- Mental calculation performed by picturing a soroban rather than touching one. An experienced user moves the beads in their head, and competitive anzan is where the very fast arithmetic people associate with abacus programmes comes from. Pibbly does not teach anzan and does not run competitions. It is mentioned here only because it is the thing families most often assume an abacus programme is for.
- Kyu grading
- The ranked levels used in Japanese soroban practice, counting downward so that a lower kyu number is a higher level. It is the same convention used in martial arts. Pibbly's founder trained as an abacus sensei and holds Kyu Level 8, achieved in 2018. Pibbly does not grade the children it teaches: the workbooks are a sequence, not a ranking, and no child is placed against another.
- Subitising
- Recognising how many things are in a small group instantly, without counting them one by one. Most people can subitise up to about four or five. It is one of the earliest numeracy skills and it is what separates a child who understands a quantity from a child who can recite the counting song. A soroban is a subitising device: seven is the gold bead and two green, taken in at a glance, rather than seven separate objects to be tallied.
Terms
Early childhood frameworks
- EYLF
- The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia, titled Belonging, Being and Becoming, currently at V2.0 published in 2022. It is the national framework for children from birth to five, built around five Learning Outcomes, each with several key components. It is a framework rather than a curriculum: it describes what learning looks like rather than prescribing what to teach. V2.0 does not number its sub-outcomes, so the familiar 5.4 style belongs to V1.0.
- QKLG
- The Queensland kindergarten learning guideline, currently the 2024 edition published by the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority. It applies to the kindergarten year, the year before Prep, and aligns to the EYLF. It sets out five learning and development areas, each with key focuses, plus a continua of learning and development that a kindergarten teacher uses to judge which phase a child's learning is more like. Numeracy sits under Communicating.
- QIP
- A Quality Improvement Plan. Every approved education and care service in Australia must keep one, identifying strengths and areas for improvement against the National Quality Standard, and an assessor reads it. It is the reason directors ask enrichment providers what evidence a programme leaves behind: something dated and physical that the service's own educators did not have to make is worth considerably more in a QIP than a photograph.
- Incursion
- An external provider coming into a service to run an activity on site, as opposed to an excursion where the children travel. Reptile shows, dance and science sessions are the common ones. Pibbly is an incursion in that sense, with two differences: it runs weekly as a programme with a workbook rather than as a one-off visit, and parents pay Pibbly directly rather than the service paying for a visit.
Terms
Safety and registration
- Blue Card
- Queensland's Working with Children Check, issued by Blue Card Services. Anyone working with children in Queensland needs a current one, and it is held by a person rather than by a company, so a service should ask for the card of the individual who will actually be in the room rather than a statement that the provider is checked. Pibbly's founder holds a current Blue Card and will provide it before a first session.
- Working with Children Check
- The general Australian term for the screening a person must pass to work or volunteer with children. Each state runs its own scheme under its own name, and Queensland's is the Blue Card. A check from another state is not automatically valid in Queensland, which is worth knowing when a provider works across borders.
- QCT
- The Queensland College of Teachers, the body that registers teachers in Queensland. A registration number is publicly checkable on the QCT register, which makes it one of the few claims a provider can make that a director can verify in under a minute rather than take on trust. Pibbly's founder is registered with the QCT, and the number is published on this site for exactly that reason.
Where to read more
The soroban terms are all shown in action, with every digit from 0 to 9 spelled out, on what is a soroban. The framework terms are set out with the actual outcomes and key focuses on how Pibbly maps to EYLF and QKLG. The safety terms are covered in the Child Safety Statement.
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