Math Collections

Today we talked about all the different ways we can show what a number looks like.  We filled a chart paper with ideas...take a look!

The students were asked to bring in a collection of objects to school.

They made an estimate of how many items they had in their collection.  

Once their estimate was made, they needed to find a way to count

their items.  

Naturally, most of them started counting by 1's.

It wasn't long before we heard...'Ahhhh!!!! I lost count' or 'What number

did I just say?', or 'I have to start over!'

We decided there had to be a better way to organize our things.

Someone quickly started putting their items into piles of 2's.  Another 

student was using piles of 10's.  The idea took off !

'I kept losing my spot trying to count my hockey cards.  

Now I have piles of 10 so it's easy to count.'

'I'm trying piles of 9...I know how to count by 9's.'

'My Pokemon cards are in 2's.'

'I'm using 2's too!'

'I have mine stacked in towers of 5.'

'I'm trying to figure out if I should use groups of 2's or 5's...'

'I lost count when I did groups of 5 because there were so many groups...

I'm going to try 10's.'

'I put my rainbow loom bracelets in groups of 10 so it was easy to count them.'

'I have 550 tiny blocks!!!  I had piles of 10 to count them...55 piles of 10!'

With the counting complete, the writing began.