Today's number sense routine isn't necessarily a routine but some ideas to
help your kids with a standard that I find particularly it's like pulling teeth.
Counting to 100 is like pulling teeth sometimes because it takes so long and
it can get really repetitive and not in a good way. So I'm giving you some ideas
of how you can make this skill, this routine that your kids need to be
able to do counting to 100, a little more interesting and give it a little more
a little more something extra so that your kids can count to 100 and
actually understand what that means.
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. What do you think of when I
say the number five? Do you think of the numeral five? Do you think of five fingers?
Do you think of five dots? Do you think of counting to five? There's lots of
different things that you might think of when you think of five and as adults
who have been counting for decades these things are not necessarily things that
we think about but when you're talking about students who have not been
counting and are new to counting who are literally only five years old have only
been on this earth for five years talking for three maybe four of them.
Counting can be a really complex mechanism. They have to think of the
numeral so they have to understand that when they see this squiggle, the
symbolic squiggle, it means five objects. They have to actually know that what it's
called five and they have to know how many five is so they need these three
things in order to really develop an understanding of a number and it really
needs to come together simultaneously to develop number sense. So something that
can often limit a student's ability to count high is that they just don't have
a understanding of what it is that they're doing or why that's important.
Kids need a lot of opportunities to practice the number sequence. One to one
correspondence is just the act of like understanding that if you move one thing
it has a name but learning those names can be really really tricky. So an example
is if you're here kids you know singing the alphabet song before they
understand that each of those words is representative of a letter they'll say
like element OP thinking that all of that together is one thing and it's not
those are all different letters the same thing happens with numbers they might
just be repeating them not understand that the order that they're saying them
matters at all and rote counting is something that is a challenge for me
specifically I know that it was a challenge because they have to be able
to count to 100 but a lot of times have no concept or understanding of how many
a hundred is and why they would ever need to do that. So it's something that I
practice every day but it can be really dry and a lot of times if you're
practicing just the sequence the counting sequence to 100 the students who
really having trouble with it are not participating with you. So there are some
things I've done in my classroom to really support all of my kids learning
to count to 100 and develop number sense and I'm gonna give you some ideas.
The first one is number songs. Singing is a great way to help kids remember
things like you ask them to sing a song for you they know all of the words so
including a lot of number songs and what you're doing is very very helpful for
helping kids develop the counting sequence or the number sequence. Just
giving a lot of opportunities like counting in calendar math is a great
way to have the kids practice there like a range from 1 to 30 and start to get
the pattern of how numbers work or how the number sequence works. Another thing
I've done before is movement counting so as we count down so like I'd be like
it's the first day of school today is the second day of school then it's the
third day of school so we add a number each day so in each decade I would give
kids a different movement that they're doing so for example if we're counting
and it is the 30th day of school from 1 to 10 we clap so it'd be like 1 2 3 4 5
and each each number gets a clap and that will be my first decade from 1 to
10 and then from 11 to 20 we do a different movement maybe we're doing
jumping jacks or maybe we are patting our shoulders or touching our head or
something like that so then from 11 to 20 you'd be counting you'd be patting your
head and counting like 11 12 patting your head that way to start to develop
one-to-one correspondence and the number sequence at the same time giving it
meaning making it tactile and then for the next one from like 20 to 30 I might
give them a different one like they might be playing air guitar or they might be
you know stomping their feet or marching in place or something like that for the
next decade so each decade gets its own movement and as the kids start to
realize that each decade gets a next movement I bring them in on it it's like
okay what movement do you think we should do for our next group of 10 and
some of the things they come up with are hilarious some of the things you're
like oh gosh that's not happening like if they want to do like spins on the floor
I was like no spins on the floor is not gonna happen for me and a lot of times
I'll frame it in the way of saying oh you know like I'm old I can't do that you're
gonna make me dizzy and then I'm not gonna be able to teach anymore and they
think they're gonna kick out of that but keeping it light and playful so if you
for sure know that a certain movement is not going to work they they're like oh
well it's because of this not because my idea was bad because they're not
necessarily bad ideas it's just how can we keep everybody safe in this space and
after you get some ideas I let the kids vote sometimes I choose be like oh of
all of these ideas this one is the one I like but usually I just have them vote
on the one that they enjoy and I'll have them practice each one so if we have
three different ideas we'll practice the first idea counting from one to ten the
second idea so you're sneaking in some extra counting to ten but they're
getting their movement they're getting some wiggles out and that can help them
with counting to 100 as well. Another game that you can do is a counting around
game I would caution though that if your students are not super confident with
the number sequence it can get a little bit of like a pressure situation if
someone has to say the next number and they don't know what that number is that
can be a little bit hard for the kids or kind of give it a like an air of like oh
if you don't know just say oh I need some help and then another student can
help them if they're not sure what number comes next so they can try counting
around the circle so one person starts one the next person to and then try and
get all the way around the circle you can also play a game like pop where they
would count just a smaller sequence so it might be one two three four five and
then the person who's five needs to pop so they'd be one two three four pop and
then it would start over for the next person so be like one two three four
pop and then the next person starts again from one one two three four pop and
then keep going that way to see if you can get around the circle and that's
great for smaller numbers or smaller sequences so my example was one two
three four five but if we're having a tricky part of your sequence like the
teen numbers 11 12 13 14 15 or crossing a decade so you might do 17 18 19 20 21
like that kind of thing is another way that you could use counting around the
circle or pop in a way that would help kids just practice that tiny little
sequence that's giving them trouble when they're hearing it a lot in a different
way and just like you counted forwards you can do backwards too so you could do
like 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 pop and then keep going that way the speaking of
counting backwards the one that I really like the best and my kids really like the
best was blast off counting like a rocket so what I would do is I would put my
like my hands above my head kind of like a little rocket and we start like in a
squatting position and then we start from 10 to be 10 9 8 and after each number
you get a little bit higher a little bit higher like you're in a rocket blasting
off and then when you get to 0 you actually blast off and get your arms up
like you really blasted off the kids really enjoyed that one as well the
next one that I'm going to go more in depth with next week is coral counting
and again that's great for shorter number sequences that you're counting
together and everybody is hearing and that routine comes from the coral
counting and counting collections book which is a great resource to have check
out see if you have it in your professional library at your school or
you can get your hands on it because it really is a great book for coral
counting and counting collections which is a hands-on way for kids to really
develop an understanding of how many of quantities numbers are so if you have the
opportunity to thumb through that book it's a great one as you get into like
first grade second grade the kids have to start skip counting skip counting by
tens is I I feel like an easier one that will help your kids get to 100 because
if they can skip count by tens they can cross the decades which trips up the
kids and the strategy I use for that one was just making up a song for counting
by tens and that's the only one that I did we did it every single day and that
really really helped a lot of my kids get over the hump of not being able to
cross over a decade so like getting stuck on 29 39 49 they would sing the song in
their head and remember which one came next and then they could keep going so
that one I'm not well alright don't judge me I'm not a singer but also I
taught Spanish immersion so it was in Spanish so 10 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
100 because 60 and 70 60 and 70 in Spanish it tripped them up every time
they would either skip one or just skip both and go from 50 to 80 it's like well
that's not gonna work we're gonna have to do 60 and 70 so that was I just sang
that song with them every day you could do it in English as well and that really
helped a lot of kids who understood the sequence 21 22 23 31 32 33 they just
couldn't remember what the name of the decade was and once they remembered it
they could keep going that really helped them out speaking of skip counting skip
counting by tens like I said is the one for kindergarten that we really focus on
at least at my school is the one that we really focused on but as they get into
first grade second grade they're gonna have to practice skip counting by fives
skip counting by twos and I think the concept of skip counting for the kids is
also kind of abstract like why would I need to skip numbers especially when
they're little you do not want them to skip numbers because if they skipped a
number they have the wrong quantity so skip counting is one that can also be
kind of abstract so something that I'd like to do with skip counting if I'm
focusing on skip counting by fives or skips counting by twos is bring it into
a problem-solving type arena and make it make sense make it more tangible why
you would want to skip count instead of counting by one as grown-ups we know
skip counting can make you more efficient in your counting but that's more of a
higher level skill than base level one-to-one correspondence so one way I
like to bring that in is I like to show them images of dice like a lot of dice
together and they have to figure out how many pips or how many your dots are on
their dice without counting by ones so they're looking at their image and then
they start to kind of group them together and maybe they make they group
them together in ways that make more sense so since counting by tens is the
first one that they learn making tens might be something that makes more
sense to them so they might know two fives make a ten so if I have an image
of 20 dice that are all showing the five they might start grouping them by ten
so that may be like okay these two are ten so instead of doing five ten 15 20
they make do 10 20 30 and it just gives kids an opportunity to use what they
know to make sense of this newer task that they're learning in a tangible way
and I will have some examples of that that you can see in the show notes along
with the blog post about this video all of that good stuff will be in the show
notes so you can take a closer look at some of the things that I'm talking
about and some of the images that I might use of my kids so that was a lot of
different ways to help your kids get that number sequence which can I feel like
be the most taxing time-consuming part of teaching math just because for me like
I said I taught Spanish immersion so I would teach the same lesson twice one
to my first class one to my second class and counting to a hundred every day
twice was a nightmare I was like I don't want to do this anymore and I feel like
sometimes the kids are like I don't want to do this anymore either so these are
just some ways to spice it up give it a little something extra and help your
kids be able to count to a hundred and like I said I would say of all of those
things the counting by tens song so starting off the year practicing the
movement counting until we got to a hundred and then after we got to the
hundred day of school which is usually in February adding in the counting by
tens song really help them be able to make it all the way to a hundred by the
end of the year so like I said I hope you found some ideas helpful I hope you
try one out in your classroom and if you do please let me know I would love to
know what your kids are really enjoying in your classroom until then I will see
you next time well you'll hear me next time you're gonna hear me next time