We had a great week before break, celebrating Valentines' Day together and then wrapping up the week by stretching our counting collection muscles all the way to 100 (and even beyond!). I have posted photos below for your enjoyment. Have a great Mid-Winter break!
Counting Collections of up to (and over) 100
Counting, one to one correspondence, and place value are important skills students need to learn in kindergarten. Students get practice with these skills while counting collections of things. Differentiation occurs as some kids count smaller collections and others are ready to move on to larger collections. I tell the students they have two jobs during counting collection time. They need to tell me how many objects are in their collection, and then they need to show me how they know, using paper and pencil (and soon videos) to convince me of the number they have. Last week, we did this activity twice. The first time, all of the kids were able to work with a partner and count their collections accurately, but not all of them were able to successfully show their work. We took some time to share a few successful papers, and then made a list of the ways (strategies) we could organize our counting to show our thinking. The second day we tried, every group was able to record what strategy they used on paper and then use their write up to explain it to the class.