Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/helping-young-children-learn-mathematics-strategies-for-meeting-the-needs-of-diverse-learners/5017446/
Ms. Emily’s kindergarten class picked up acorns on a walk around the neighborhood. When they returned to the classroom, they put all the acorns into one bucket and counted the large collection together. Later, during small group activity time, Ms. Emily distributed a plastic bag to each child, labeled with a numeral from 1 to 20 and the corresponding number of dots for students who were unable to recognize numerals. Based on her knowledge of each child’s number sense, she carefully selected reasonable numbers for each child. She asked the children to work in pairs, to put the appropriate number of acorns into the bags, and to check each other’s work. A child with stronger number skills was paired with a child having weaker number skills.Jason’s bag was labeled “9” and Rasheed’s bag “18.”
Jason tried several times to count acorns, but each time, he lost track and kept counting past 9. Ms. Emily asked, “Jason, can you draw a picture of the 9 acorns to see if it might help?” Jason made circles on a paper to represent the acorns. Then, without further suggestion, he put one acorn on each circle, recounted them twice, and put the ...