Dot Plate Workshop: Early Numeracy Concepts October 9, 2012

This week some of the teachers in the district attended a workshop held here at the SD#60 board office. Our focus for the session was early numeracy, in particular, number relationships that are important for young learners. We focused on these “big four” relationships:
• One more/one less (extending to two more/two less)
• Visual/spatial relationships
• The benchmarks or anchors of 5 and 10
• Whole-part-part

I particularly refer to the whole-part-part relationship in that manner (as opposed to part-part-whole often used by others). I like stating “whole” first because the emphasis of that relationship is that a number can be pulled apart into two smaller parts, not the joining together of two parts to make a larger whole. This distinction is not just a matter of semantics, but rather a spotlighting of the pulling apart. “To conceptualize a number as being made up of two or more parts is the most important relationship that can be developed about numbers” (Van de Walle, 2005).

Understand that there is a lot of counting that must take place as children work to build these relationships. They must repeatedly work with counters as well as dice, dominoes, ten frames, dot cards, dot plates, and other things that show patterned arrangements of numbers to build a deep understanding about the numbers, first 1-10, then extending to 20, to 100 and beyond.

The workshop participants went home with a set of dot plates they made from small paper plates and bingo daubers (see photo). They also took home 4 sets of small dot cards printed on colourful cardstock. Lastly they took away larger paper plates with dot patterns on them (the patterns from either mini dot cards or mini ten frames) that could become spinners for games or made into activities for math centres.

One other tool that we talked about was a grid of tools that both the teacher and students could use for representing numbers. When one looks at the grid and possible combinations of materials, it is easy to see that having a few good tools on hand allows for many different ways for young children to be involved in representing number.

Download the Representing Number Grid here.

Download the dot card spinner here.

Download the ten frame spinner here.

I hope you will think deeply about the ways you are having your young learners interact with numbers! You are laying the foundation for later mathematical learning.

Mathematically yours,
Carollee

PS My apologies to the participants — I had intended to post this blog by the end of last week and did not get to it, and over the weekend I did not have access to the visuals I wanted to post with it. So, hopefully, this is a case of better late than never!

Reference
Van de Walle, J. and Folk, S. (2005). Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally (Canadian Edition). Pearson: Toronto.

Math Toolkits for Students: The Basics (part 2) May 17, 2011

In the first toolkit post I set the background for toolkits, so now let’s look the the really important part — what goes into the tookits. I will first list items that I have used and recommended for all students in grades 1 to 7. (Please note that the toolkit idea may even be useful in grades 8 and 9, but I have not personally used them in those grades or carefully looked at the curriculum to see which tools might be useful in a toolkit.)

Toolkit Contents for grades 1-7:

• A response board and appropriate tool for writing
• A large, laminated 100 chart and/or 0-99 chart
• A large, laminated 100-dot array (see illustration — I LOVE this tool!!!!)
• A mini-deck of cards (playing cards ace to 10, one of each)
• A set on numerals 0-9 (two of each is best) along with symbols for “greater than”, “less than”, and “equals” — also a decimal point for older students
• Bingo chips or punched-paper circles (in a snack-sized zip baggie)
• A piece of string (random length for each child), wrapped around a piece of box-board to keep it “tidy”
• A ruler marked in cm (also mm for older students)
• Pattern blocks (either real, or die cut out of construction paper, in a snack-sized zip baggie)
• Blank spinners, with pre-marked sections — paper part only
• Paper clips to use as the spinning part of “fast spinners”
• small mirror(s) — hinged ones are fabulous!!

In reality, it is hard for me to put this list out there without stopping at every item and going through a set of activities that uses the particular tool — thus I do a workshop about creating and using toolkits! But for now I will just post the list and elaborate if someone has a question about a particular item.

Mathematically yours,
Carollee