Hello and welcome to Making Number Sense Makes Sense, a podcast for elementary teachers,
specifically early elementary teachers, looking to really make an impact in the number sense
of their students.
Hello and welcome back to Making Number Sense Makes Sense.
Today I'm here to talk with you about the Wreck and Wreck.
Have you ever seen one before?
The Wreck and Wreck is basically a tool that is great for lots of different things when
working with kindergarten, first grade, second grade, in moving past counting things one
by one and starting to unitize, starting to subitize and developing more sophisticated
counting strategies.
So let's learn about it.
So a Wreck and Wreck has two rods with 10 beads each, five red and five white.
And the setup of the Wreck and Wreck with the 10 and 10 and five and five really helps
students with a lot of things that we need to be able to be really sophisticated counters
and move from counting to addition and subtraction strategies on and on and on.
When introducing a Wreck and Wreck to my kindergarteners, I usually like to wait a little bit until
they've had a lot of practice counting and really developing their counting number sequence
and one-to-one correspondence before we move on to a Wreck and Wreck.
How do you introduce it to your students?
Well, I usually start by asking them what they notice about it.
That there's 20 beads, that there's five and five, there's some on the top and some on
the bottom.
And very important when using any math tool, I want to give them a chance to really play
with it, shake it, see what it feels like, move the beads around before it becomes a
tool.
They're play out of it, though we still have lots of fun games to play with it.
After I've introduced it, I like to try and have them show me different numbers.
Like, oh, can you show me this number?
Can you show me this number and tell me what they notice about when we move the numbers
around?
What it looks like, what it feels like, what the other side looks like, that is not in
play, all those different things.
So to use a Wreck and Wreck, I usually like to remember the rhyme white on the right.
So the white beads belong on the right side and that is the zero position or starting
position.
And then from there, the kids slide the beads over.
Now, like I said, they can slide one by one, but the benefit of a Wreck and Wreck is you
really try to get them to see, instead of seeing like one, two, three, four, five, actually
get them to see five and swipe them all at one time so they can start to think of numbers
as bigger chunks versus one by one.
The Math Resource Learning Center has a great PDF about Wreck and Wrecks and how to introduce
them and some activities and lessons you could do with them, and I will have that link for
you in the description below.
Now, when students are using the Wreck and Wreck, what you're really looking for is if
they can start to group numbers together.
So instead of moving over seven one at a time, they would do five, six, seven, or if they
can just push seven along the whole time.
Something that'll really help with that is if they get to use them a lot.
A lot of visuals, a lot of being able to play with it and see it and start to remember what
those numbers look like or suputizing, which is one of the great things about a Wreck and
Wreck, similar to a ten frame that you can suputize that way, is a different way to see
numbers, a different way to play with them, and a different way to learn to suputize or
see numbers without counting.
Because of the structure of the Wreck and Wreck with five red and five white beads altogether
making ten, it really helps to support an anchor to five and an anchor to ten when kids
are counting and eventually using addition and subtraction strategies.
So they can think of those friendly numbers and then from there build on or build backwards
from it.
Something else that Wreck and Wreck are really great for is learning about doubles and near
doubles and what they might look like.
If your question was eight plus eight and they put eight on the top and eight on the
bottom, they might start to see that eight is also the same as ten.
Eight plus eight is also the same as ten plus six is also the same as ten on the top and
six on the bottom.
There's lots of different ways that they could see it, which helps them with their fact fluency
and applying their previous knowledge to new problems, which is what we want.
We want to develop their number sense so that they can approach any problem that they might
have.
Building off of the doubles and near doubles, it's also really helpful to see the different
ways that kids think about numbers and think about solving problems.
A lot of times in math people are pigeonholed into thinking there's only one way to do
everything, but that's just simply not true.
And lots of kids, depending on their level and how familiar they are with the Wreck and
Wreck might help them change or think about things in a different way, working with partners,
working with our partners and just seeing things differently.
For example, if you are doing nine plus six, some students might need to make the nine
on the top row and nine on the bottom row to figure out what that was, whereas others
might be able to start compensating.
Understanding that nine and ten are really close.
So instead of moving nine and six, they might move ten and five and start to develop more
sophisticated counting strategies and addition and subtraction strategies moving into first
grade and continuing into second grade.
We've talked about what a Wreck and Wreck is, how to introduce it, and the benefits
of using a Wreck and Wreck in your classroom.
Let's dive into some full group, small group, center activities that you can use Wreck and
Wreck for.
So the first one kind of goes along with subitizing is quick images.
To play quick images, you will flash a number really quickly, and then the students either
have to think about in their head what that might look like or build that number on a Wreck
and Wreck or whatever you're using for subitizing.
So in this case, we would be using the Wreck and Wreck cart or your own Wreck and Wreck
and show them for three to five seconds, put it down and see if they can recreate or figure
out in their head the number that you showed.
The next activity could be done small group or full group, and it's called one push two
pushes.
So like I said before, the Wreck and Wreck is really great about developing strategies
that are beyond just counting from one.
So with one push two pushes, you would give your students a number, for example, seven,
and have them think about how they might make a seven on their Wreck and Wreck in the least
number of pushes.
So just one push to make the number seven.
So they might discuss like, oh, well, you might have to move it like this.
Some students might say, oh, I just know five and two is seven.
So I'm just going to have two white beads and move them over.
But other students might be like, oh, well, see any five, six, seven, or some might still
have to count it out in their head to know how many to move over in just one push.
And then two pushes would be for a double digit number.
So from 11 to 20, like how can you make the number 12 in just two pushes?
So for that one, you would try to move 10 and two.
The next game is something that you can do as a math center or math station.
It's called pick, build, and cover.
So the way that you play pick, build, and cover is you pick a Wreck and Wreck card,
you build it on your Wreck and Wreck, and then find that number on your counting mat.
And I'll have a link to that below that you can use in your classroom.
The next game is called spin and slide.
So for this one, they'll have a spinner that has the Wreck and Wreck's on it, either one
to 10 or 11 to 20, depending on their counting level.
And they would spin whatever number it is, and then figure out how they would slide to
make their Wreck and Wreck match the number.
And if you want to make it a little more challenging, instead of giving a picture of the Wreck and
Wreck, you can just do numerals, and then they have to figure out what that numeral
would look like instead of doing a direct match.
In the next two games, you can access for free in the link in the description.
The first one is called spin, count, and cover.
So for this one, the students have a spinner, and they will spin it and see what number
they get, and whatever number they get, numeral they get.
They'll have to find that number on their counting mat and cover it with whatever you
might have in your classroom.
And then they keep going until they finish the board.
And that one also has the version for one to 10 and 11 to 20.
The last game is called how many combinations can you find?
And this one has more to do with composing and decomposing numbers.
So you would either give your students the number that they're working on, or they could
roll a dice, whatever they need, to figure out which number they're going to be working
with.
So for example, if they're working with a number five, they would work with a partner
or on their own to figure out how many different ways they can make a five on their Wreck and
Wreck.
So you can have one student be the top and one student be the bottom, or you can have
them just working out, see if they could figure it out together, and record their answers
that they got on their recording sheet, which like I said is available in the link in the
description.
That was a lot of information about Wreck and Wreck, and I hope that you found it helpful.
If you're looking for a digital version of a Wreck and Wreck, I will have that link down
below that you can access for free, a zero to 20 Wreck and Wreck and a zero to 100 Wreck
and Wreck that you'll be able to use.
Again, don't forget to grab your free products in the link in the description.
And there'll also be a blog post that goes with this as well, if you'd like to see everything
right now.
I hope that you found this helpful.
Make sure to subscribe for more math videos, and I will see you next time.
And to play quick images, you basically flash something for...