One of the perks of being a math instructional coach is that you get to visit classrooms on a daily basis. On one of those visits, I observed this 1st-grade number of the day routine using ten frames. The daily routine begins by showing the number of the day (which is...
As a young girl, I briefly took gymnastics lessons. Anybody else? I have to admit that I was not very flexible—I couldn’t do a smooth backward roll to save my life! That said, one of my favorite Olympic events is the gymnastics competition. Every four years,...
Composing and decomposing numbers is critical learning for Kindergarteners and 1st Graders. This is something that needs to be practiced all year long as students master the combinations first for 5, then 6, then 7, etc. And, of course, they won’t all progress...
“More learning time in Kindergarten should be devoted to number than to other topics.” That statement is from the introduction to the Kindergarten Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. In other words, all standards are not created equal. There are...
So, I’m starting out today with a pop quiz. Ha ha. What do the following number sentences have in common? NO calculators! They all equal 120, don’t they? Do you see why? Each of the expressions is really just another way to write 15 x 8. The numbers 15 and...
