November Number Sense

Ahh...Number Sense... a phrase you have see written here before.  In my blog on November 12, 2015 I wrote that when young children see how numbers have a purpose in their everyday life they begin to develop Number Sense.  

Number sense refers to a child's ability to use and understand numbers by:

*knowing their value

*how to use numbers to make judgements

*how to use numbers flexibly when adding or subtracting

*having strategies for counting, measuring and estimating

In the pictures that follow mainly from the month of November, you will see how children are building those numbers sense ways of thinking by counting, putting numbers together (composing fiveness and then ten-ness) as well as foundational skills for exactness by learning to write numbers correctly with automaticity.  

Counting: counting in sequence with one-to-one correspondence and matching a group of objects to printed numbers.  

Counting on... once one has counted a group of objects, and one more is added they learn that one more means adding one more to the group and there isn't a need to recount, because the group has increased by just one in the count sequence.

Dominoes are a natural tool for early composing of numbers.  Children can easily see what the total number of pips (dots) are on a domino, and see the two amounts that add up to that number.  When a domino has a group of six on one side and a group of two on the other, it is more clear to see that 6+2=8.  

For early subtraction or what we call decomposing numbers or taking them apart, we used ten frames filled with five, took away a given amount of chips to see how many were left in the Minus One game.

Group Rotations: Depending upon the skill being taught math groups split the children into two smaller groups with Mrs. Campbell teaching a lesson and me teaching another lesson so that we can give more individual time to children.  Some days our lesson focus requires even deeper attention to students and we have three groups that rotate over three days... a group with Mrs. C, myself and an independent group using Dreambox Learning on iPads and/or Chromebooks.

Writing "the story" of math composing and decomposing is a critical skill we will practice all year.  It is important that kids don't just memorize 5-5=0... but rather understand "I had five chips, I took away five chips and now I have zero."  We will practice telling this story so they know the numbers represents a number of objects... not just a memorized computation.

Many students are now developing automaticity in knowing what number combinations make five (1and 4, 2 and 3, 0 and 5, and their reverse 4 and 1, 3 and 2 and 5 and 0)... we want them to understand the meaning behind 2+3=5 in that they are gathering a group of two objects and adding three more which gives them five in all.  Again, "telling the story" of adding and subtraction strengthens their numbers sense and ability to think flexibly about number combinations.

Neatness Counts: We are now stressing the importance of neatness when completing math work.. numbers have to be written correctly, groups of objects counted in a neat pile, and numbers written smaller to fit in a sequence.

"Ten-ness"... Working with number combinations to ten... ten frames help see those combinations more clearly.

Explaining our thinking... in the lower left  and right photos children are explaining their thinking about measuring.  A critical math skill is being able to tell why they arrive at an answer or why they think about a mathematical idea in their own way.

Math Boxes: We use math boxes filled with tools to improve foundational skills... we do this during our "math intervention" time... time focused on repetitive practice of a particular skill which is used in other math thinking and learning.  For example, practicing writing numbers correctly is basic to all math we do... so we practice over and over so they write with automaticity.