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.

Counting

On Thursday Tom took the old-timers and the new second year students to the multi, which gave me some time with our first year students. One of the students had repeatedly asked if we were going to do another scavenger hunt. (There was a Lower School scavenger hunt at our Open House for new students on Monday.) I came up with a number scavenger hunt that involved counting various things in the classroom. As the students went about counting and recording, it was a great chance for me to see how different ones took on the task. I observed how they went about counting the objects and how much confidence they showed in the counting. One student proudly shared that he counted by 3’s. I also watched as they recorded the results. A student asked if 8 was the number with “two balls.” Two girls consulted together about whether the 1 in 12 should go first or not. They had fun with the activity and seemed satisfied as they turned in their recording sheets.