Final Cover - For Printing

PRE-REQUISITE SKILLS FOR THE

EFFICIENT LEARNING OF ABACUS

Abacus should be introduced as early as possible in schools. However, those children who
did not have an opportunity to learn the skills at the primary level can also learn those at
a later stage. For such children, understanding as well as mastery in certain mathematical
concepts would enhance the effective learning of operations through abacus. These
pre-requisite skills are only suggestive (except 1-5) and not prescriptive. They are as
follows :

1. Demonstrating the correct finger movements in using abacus.


2. Demonstrating correct hand positions in using abacus.


3. Explaining the counting procedures in abacus.


4. Explaining the concept of Clearing and Adding in abacus.


5. Understanding the concept of Complement of certain number with respect to another
   number.


6. Memory of Multiplication tables for numbers 1 to 20, preferably for higher classes.


7. Memory of the squares of the numbers 1 to 25 (minimum), preferably for higher
   classes.


8. Memory of the square roots (perfect) of squares from 1 to 1000, preferably for higher
   classes.


9. Understanding the relation between fraction division and fraction multiplication.


10. Understanding the concepts of Least Common Multiple and Highest Common Factor.

Module – 5