Good Questions for Kindergarten & Grade 1
Lessons and Open-ended Tasks for Building Number Sense: A New Resource by Carole Fullerton
Good questions engage students in important mathematics. They inspire and propel students in their learning, offering an entry point for all. What better response could there be for our delightfully diverse early primary classrooms?
This new combined grades resource is built around good questions, drawn from each of the strands in the Kindergarten and Grade 1 curricula. Lessons feature sorting and patterning, shape and measurement and number sense (subitizing, counting, estimating and the operations) in an accessible format for teachers of early primary.
At the end of each set of lesson sequences, a collection of more than 200 open-ended tasks is presented to allow for building, exploration, practice and extension, meeting the needs of all learners.
Have fun! Get inspired! Keep them thinking!
Place Value in Primary: Developing Number Sense
Wow. I have had the most extraordinary summer. Truly extraordinary. And somehow between engaging in a series of remarkable, life-affirming adventures I have managed to write another teacher resource book… 😊
It’s all about Place Value (as I’m sure you’ve figured out!) and is intended for teachers of kindergarten through grade 2, with special accommodations for those who teach in combined grades settings. There are 230 pages of developmentally framed lessons designed to address the diversity in our primary classrooms. Each one supports students to represent and describe quantity, to compare and order sets, to use referents to estimate and to skip count. Lessons devoted to measurement — an ideal practical application of place value in the world — are also featured. Whole class lessons, centres tasks and games for practice allow students to connect these important concepts in a seamless way, and can be used both as a unit or spread throughout the year to build and consolidate understanding.
Place Value in Primary: Developing Number Sense is available from my online store for $40 plus shipping. I hope you enjoy it!
Carole
(PS… A companion volume for Grades 2 to 4 is in the works – expect it later this fall!)
Find It! A Subitizing Game
Good morning!
In Kindergarten and Grade 1, students need practice subitizing. That is, being able to recognize at a glance and name familiar arrangements of objects without counting. It’s an important precursor to estimation, skip counting and multiplication, and depends on students’ understandings of conservation — that 5 is 5, no matter how it is arranged.
In this simple partner game, students roll a standard die and then find a cell with the same number of dots. They cover the dots with a counter in their colour and then give their partner a turn. Three in a row in a single colour wins the game.
Small groups or even the whole class can play the Bingo version of this game. Each student needs a bingo card and a small handful of counters in a single colour. Have the “caller” roll a die and call out the number to be covered. As in traditional Bingo, three in a line (across, down or diagonal) wins the round.
Click on the links below to download the partner game and/or the Bingo version of this game.
Enjoy!
Carole
Math and Literature Resource for Grades K-3
Hello all!
My colleague Sandra Ball and I have completed another resource for primary teachers!
Read A Story: Explore The Math promotes the teaching of important math concepts through the context of great children’s books… The lessons span K-3 and some are even appropriate for grades 3/4 classrooms. Lessons involving number sense and operations, data management, measurement and more are included in this 65 page resource. Scan through the list of titles and corresponding math concepts to sort out which children’s books would be a best fit for you and your students. The complete set of ISBN numbers for each of the stories is included so you can easily share ordering information with your teacher librarian…!
To download, please visit my online store (https://mindfull.ecwid.com) and click on the FREE DOWNLOADS icon.
Enjoy!
Carole
Daily Math Investigations for K-2 – An Alternative to Calendar
Sandra Ball and I are pleased to announce the release of our newest collaboration, entitled Daily Math Investigations: Meaningful Math Routines. The resource is intended to present alternatives to a traditional calendar time – ways to keep our students actively engaged in the learning of mathematics in meaningful, hands-on and developmentally appropriate ways.
In the resource, you’ll find a set of thoughtful tasks that promote visual spatial capacity, number sense, operational sense, data and measurement concepts. Each is presented in the form of both entry tasks and rich routines, intended to keep your youngest students thinking and reasoning mathematically. The complete resource, including a selection of classroom-ready line masters, is available to download for free, by visiting my online store at https://mindfull.ecwid.com. Click on the FREE DOWNLOADS icon to access the PDFs.
We sincerely hope that this resource provides you with practical, fun and engaging ideas for use your primary classroom – ways to ensure all students are doing math every day!
Carole and Sandra
Falling Leaves… Matching numerals to sets for kindergarten
Hello all…
I thought I’d post an autumn-themed game on the blog this week for my colleagues in kindergarten. The game is called Falling Leaves, and it’s based on a game from the BEAM website. In my version of the game, students start with 15 unifix or stacking cubes in their own colour. To begin, Player 1 rolls a regular 6-sided die and puts a cube on the leaf with that numeral. Then Player 2 has a turn. If there is already a cube in that leaf, students stack their cube on top of the one that’s there, to make a tower.
At the end of the game (when all of the cubes are used up), players scan to see which of the towers has their colour on the top. Those towers are collected and snapped together. The player with the tallest tower wins!
In this game, pink is playing green. Green collects all the towers with green on top. Pink collects all of the towers with pink on top.
Stacked together, it’s clear to see that pink wins!
Enjoy… And happy fall!
Carole
Representing number in many ways…
Hello all!
I wanted to follow up with my colleagues who attended the k and k/1 sessions in Langley on Friday. I showed some materials that I then promised to upload to the blog – and then promptly forgot! Here are the files… 🙂
For those of you who were not in attendance, the idea is simple. Young children need the opportunity to represent number in many ways to truly make sense of it. Our youngest learners need more than most to make sense of the squiggles we call digits by building, comparing, partitioning and learning to subitize amounts to five – and then from 5 through ten. Consider these cards, images and frames for representing number as part of your opening activities, a centre or as meaningful practice following on from a lesson. Students love the chance to roll a die and say how many – and then to build and record what happened! The files are below – and are included in French as well.
🙂
Carole
PS – Use the “finger cards” to create sets that make five like in the Room on the Broom task, below. Copy the cards, cut them out and then distribute them in pairs so that you know that every child in the room will be able to find their missing part (ie, be sire to hand out a 2 and a 3, a 4 and a 1, and a 5 and a zero…). You might consider NOT using the 5 and zero pairing – seems sort of unkind to leave a child with nothing in front of them!!
Hallowe’en Math – Getting to 5 in Kindergarten
Happy Fall!
I wanted to send along a list of spooky books for math investigations for spreading the Hallowe’en math love. I hope you can find some or all of these in your school libraries… There are so many fun contexts to explore around this season – from notions of pumpkin circumference to skip counting, from growing patterns to playing with the operations and the complements of 5 and 10.
One of my favourite contexts for thinking about parts of 5 stems from a story called Room on the Broom. Just this week I worked in a K/1 classroom and explored the missing part – or complement – of 5. Then we read the book by Julia Donaldson, in which a witch and her friends fly about on a broomstick – adding a friend until there are 5 on the broomstick in all. We “built” some of the book’s illustrations in egg carton 5-frames, and talked about how much room was still left on our broom, if our brooms, like hers, had 5 seats.
Next, I whispered a number from 1-4 in each child’s ear (I left off zero and five for this initial exploration…) and had them build that number in their 5-frame broomstick. Then I asked the children “How much room is on your broom?”. The K/1 kids then had to find the person whose broom “completed” their’s… Click to take a look in the pictures below:
a child with 2 on his broom finds a child with three on her broom:
3 and 2
and they put their brooms together (one on top of the other) to fill it up.
brooms together
The egg cartons I like best are clear plastic ones – and you can see why… looking through one 5-frame to the other is a powerful way to see the parts of 5!
After a couple of turns with this game, I asked children to record what they did and how they filled up the room on their broom with their partner. You are welcome to use the There’s More Room on my Broom! line master to try this with your students as well. In this photo, you can see see one of the grade 1 students working to show her thinking on the form…
Have a fun and spooky mathy season!
Carole
The What Do They Know Assessment for Grades 1& 2
Hello to my colleagues and friends…
Last spring, Sandra Ball (Surrey School District) and I crafted an assessment and instructional resource for kindergarten and K/1 classrooms. Focussed on subitizing, partitioning and patterning, this tool is designed to be administered in the fall and again in the spring of the year. Teachers work with the whole class or with small groups when performing the assessment. The tasks are drawn from story contexts to make them connected and authentic. Kids have fun showing what they know and can do! Hence the name – The “What Do They Know” Assessment. :o)
THIS spring, Sandra and I put together the companion resource for grade 1 and 2 classrooms. Again, we focus on subitizing and partitioning, but now we extend notions of patterning to include skip counting.
Best of all, an instructional component accompanies both the K/1 and Grades 1/2 resources, to help guide your teaching between assessments!
Sandra and I would like to invite you to download and use these assessments with your students this fall. They can be found by going to my online store (https://mindfull.ecwid.com) and click on the FREE DOWNLOADS icon.
Have an amazing year! Enjoy every minute.
Carole (and Sandra!)
To learn more about the K/1 resource, its design and intent, please click here to read an article from the September 2011 edition of the BC Association of Mathematics Teachers’ journal, Vector.
Hallowe’en Math – and the spooky complement of 5
Happy Fall!
I wanted to send along a list of spooky books for math investigations for spreading the Hallowe’en math love. I hope you can find some or all of these in your school libraries… There are so many fun contexts to explore around this season – from notions of pumpkin circumference to skip counting, from growing patterns to playing with the operations and the complements of 5 and 10.
One of my favourite contexts for thinking about parts of 5 stems from a story called Room on the Broom. Just this week I worked in a K/1 classroom and explored the missing part – or complement – of 5. Then we read the book by Julia Donaldson, in which a witch and her friends fly about on a broomstick – adding a friend until there are 5 on the broomstick in all. We “built” some of the book’s illustrations in egg carton 5-frames, and talked about how much room was still left on our broom, if our brooms, like hers, had 5 seats.
Next, I whispered a number from 1-4 in each child’s ear (I left off zero and five for this initial exploration…) and had them build that number in their 5-frame broomstick. Then I asked the children “How much room is on your broom?”. The K/1 kids then had to find the person whose broom “completed” their’s… Click to take a look in the pictures below:
a child with 2 on his broom finds a child with three on her broom:
3 and 2
and they put their brooms together (one on top of the other) to fill it up.
brooms together
The egg cartons I like best are clear plastic ones – and you can see why… looking through one 5-frame to the other is a powerful way to see the parts of 5!
After a couple of turns with this game, I asked children to record what they did and how they filled up the room on their broom with their partner. You are welcome to use the There’s More Room on my Broom! line master to try this with your students as well. In the photo below, you can see see one of the grade 1 students working to show her thinking on the form…
Have a fun and spooky mathy season!
Carole
Mathematical Thinking 
