Counting Around the Circle

A new warm-up routine that I am using with my math group comes from a book I read over the summer, Number Sense Routines by Jessica Shumway. The routine is “counting around the circle.” I choose a student to begin the counting and tell them how to count (by two’s, three’s, five’s, ten’s, etc.) At first we just practiced counting in different ways. Now as we get ready to begin counting, I ask them predict what number a certain student will say. Or we count around the circle once and I then ask what number we will get to when we go around a second time. It is a fun way to wake up their number sense.