As promised, in this episode I'm going to talk about choral counting, which is
another excellent number sense routine, especially for trickier number sequences
when kids are counting and pulling out patterns in our number system. And if
there's one episode where you're going to actually click from the show notes, it
would be this one to go check out the blog post or the video because you'll
see what I'm talking about. I have some pictures of what a completed choral
count might look like and give you some ideas about how to make it work in your
classroom.
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. Last week I talked about
rote counting and things that you can do to make rote counting a little more
exciting in your classroom. And one of the things that I really like to include
is a choral count for trickier number sequences or if they're having a lot of
trouble specifically writing numbers and getting the order of the numbers
mixed up, like if they're trying to write 15, writing a 51, choral counting is a
great way to really draw attention to that and help them make sense of why the
numbers have that order. Last year I got rid of most of the stuff on my walls.
Well, number one, because it was hard to put up because I had whiteboards all
over my room, I also wanted the whiteboards available when we did building
thinking classroom style tasks and I have a bunch of episodes about that that
you can go check out and it's a really, really great framework for problem
solving in kindergarten. But coming back to choral counting, so the only thing
that I actually lift up all year like I used to have the calendar up all year,
that kind of thing, my math station chart, all that kind of stuff, I used to have it
in pocket charts up all year. But this year I got rid of all of that, went digital
for calendar, went digital for math stations, but what I did not go digital
with was a hundreds chart. The hundreds chart stayed up all year because it's such
a valuable tool and when I first started teaching I don't think I realized how
valuable that tool was. Now the hundreds chart that I used was actually like in
rainbow order because my students, my team really enjoyed rainbows so it was a
rainbow order and I feel like that's another reason the kids liked it because
it was a rainbow and if you are spent any time around kindergartners you know
that they love rainbows. But one day I don't know why I asked the kids like what
do you notice about the hundreds chart and do you have any questions about the
hundreds chart and it sparked really interesting discussions around the
hundreds chart. Kids were asking me why certain numbers repeat or why this group
has a ones in front and why the next line has a two in front of each number
and why the numbers change and why there's zeros like they had really been
paying more attention to the hundreds chart than I realized and I was like hmm
that's really interesting. I didn't I wouldn't have thought that they were
paying that much attention because you know sometimes you're like I just don't
think that they listen to me at all but they listen more than you think and
they're paying attention to the most interesting things. So that's when
choral counting came in because some kids were noticing that patterns ended up
that way but didn't really know why and some kids just had no idea. So a choral
count is like it sounds when you're counting together chorally but only in a
specific range. So you might start at the number eight and go to the number 20
together. So instead of just counting like eight, nine, ten, eleven what you're
doing as the teacher is you're writing down the numbers that you're saying so
you remind your students like don't count too fast because I have to actually
write down the numbers that we're saying. So when you say eight you write down the
eight, nine, ten and then go to 20 and from there you'll ask the kids okay we're
looking at these numbers what do you notice about them. So before you even
start counting you'll be like okay we're gonna start at eight I want you to think
about what the next number is so that everybody can join in in the choral count.
So if we're working with eight so go eight, nine, ten and then stop at 20 and
from there just give all of the kids some think time to look at the numbers that
you said, the numbers that you wrote down and have them tell you what you
noticed. When you're recording your choral count so you've written the numbers
out and then whatever the kids are calling attention to highlight those. So I
often like to use a different color. So if a student tells me that they notice
that there is a repetition of twos like look there's a two there, two there, two
there, I might circle all of the twos in one color and then right on the side like
so and so said that they noticed a lot of twos and then go on to the next one
it's like what else do you notice. Someone else say they might notice that
there is a lot of ones in the teens like all of those numbers start with one. So
from there I might circle all of the ones in a different color and write
student X said that they noticed a lot of ones and then move on to the next
person so the different colors kind of help the kids visually differentiate
between the things that their classmates are saying and also helps the kids feel
like oh I made a contribution if you're writing down what they said in their
words to encourage more participation also for them to be like oh I did notice
something different or they had a connection with another student they're
like oh you notice the twos and I notice the twos too. So recording it
colorfully and what the kids say can really bring some authenticity and
meaning to the choral count. With a choral count you could just write the
numbers horizontally but you might also try and write them vertically if you're
wanting to pull something different from the numbers. So if I started at 8 and I
went to 20 and I wrote it horizontally they might start to notice that in 8
there's an 8 but there's also an 8 in 18 they might notice there's a 9 in 9 and
also in 19 they might notice that 10 and 20 both have a 0 if they're looking
right at the end there they might not see necessarily something in the middle
from the 11 to 18 they might not see anything but if I went vertical instead
of horizontal so I started at 8 and then 9 and then went to 10 from the top and
then 11, 12, 13 all the way to 20 then they might see that all of the numbers
this way vertically the first number is always a 1 and the second number counts
up and they might say oh I see two twos I see a lot of ones I see this I see that
and looking at numbers that way like kind of like a microscope on a certain
number range can really help pull out those notice things that you want kids
to have and then they might see oh this pattern can be extrapolated or if I ask
them what do you think the next number might be what is it going to look like
they can think about the pattern that they saw and then move from there so if
I stopped at 20 and I was like okay what do you think 21 would look like so if
they're thinking about it that way they might be hmm well if the 20 is a 2 and a
0 and I'm looking at 21 I know that the number has to start with a 2 because
that's the decade we're in and if it's 21 the one comes next or you might ask
what does 25 look like skipping some numbers and they could use the same
strategy well it has to start with a 2 and if I'm looking across this way there
are 5's there so then they can pull out the next number and realize that the
number sequence is actually a pattern that can help them when they have to
wrote count or when they have to figure out how to write a number think about
what the other numbers around it look like planning a coral count can be a
little bit more time-consuming than planning for a quick image or planning
for which one doesn't belong this one can take a little more time just because
you need to really consider what it is you want to focus on when you're planning
a coral count so you want to decide if you want it to be actually written like
on chart paper or or on a whiteboard if you want it to be digital what you want
to call attention to the direction of your numbers that you're writing top to
bottom are you writing left to right and the range of numbers that you're using
so a planning sheet for something like that could be helpful I'll have one
link down below you're also going to want to think about what you're going to
count so what is the number order that you're going to be working on are you
going to be focusing on skip counting you can change the way that things are
oriented to highlight certain numbers and skip counting you might want to
highlight crossing over a decade if that's tricky or team numbers like I
used in my example and if you're working with first grade second grade you might
want to highlight the difference between two digit numbers and three digit
numbers so you might start at 95 and go to 115 and then focus in on what looks
different about those numbers like beyond the obvious two digits and three
digits but also kind of think about wow the number sequence even though I'm
writing 115 instead of 15 the number sequence is still similar what's
changing is the number in front which is the hundred so you can really bring in
discussions about place value that way but the number sequence is still a
pattern and the pattern continues throughout all of the decades all of the
centuries I guess and beyond 100,000 so if you're starting from 995 and go to
1015 so that kids can see the difference between what a three digit number looks
like four digit number looks like and really focus on that because students
don't really have as much opportunity to see four digit numbers five digit
numbers written out so a coral count can really help kids hone in on what they
look like and start to make the connection between number patterns from
the simple hunters chart to what it looks like in the thousands to what it
looks like in the 10,000 and beyond so again please let me know if there's
anything else you'd like to know about coral counting like I said I'll have the
link to the blog post some resources that you might like to look at down below
that you can click on and let me know if you have any questions