Investigations Blog
“Is 100 a Teen Number?” Part 2
What follows is a lightly edited version of the second part of an end-of-Kindergarten discussion about the teen numbers. In Part 1, students took up the question of whether 100 is a teen number. That conversation built on a previous one, about why there are so many 1s in the teen numbers. At a certain point in the conversation about whether 100 is a teen number, the discussion began circling around the same ideas, ones that had already been shared. At that point, the teacher made a decision to...
read more“Is 100 a Teen Number?” Part 1
Not long after I witnessed a Kindergarten conversation about why there are so many 1s in the teen numbers, I visited the same classroom. This time, it was Nicole who asked a question that knocked my socks off. “I wonder if 100 is a teen number?” When I asked why she thought it might be she said, “Because it starts with a 1.” Her partner nodded, nudged her to take her turn, and they returned to their game. Several days later, I returned, for their end-of-unit discussion about the teen numbers....
read more“Why are there so much 1s in these numbers?”
Last spring, I visited a Kindergarten classroom near the end of the year. Students were participating in a Math Workshop focused on the teen numbers, choosing among activities that asked them to identify and recognize teen numbers; to represent them in several different ways (e.g. on Ten Frames, with cubes, with numerals); and, ultimately, to come to see them as being composed of ten ones and some numbers of ones. I wandered over to Stella, who was playing Race to the Top: Teen Numbers. In...
read moreCounting is Serious Business
“One, two, three, four, five…” I was interested in how quickly Owen and Ravi figured out a way to count the set of 40 yellow hexagons in their Inventory Bag. The boys took turns saying a number as they placed the hexagons in a line which started to snake across the rug in the meeting area of their kindergarten classroom. “Twenty-eight, twenty-niiiinnnne…” Ravi pauses unsure about what number comes next. Owen whispers “30” and Ravi says “30” as he places the thirtieth block in the line....
read moreWatch, Notice, and Learn
Classroom video is a powerful tool for studying and reflecting on mathematics teaching and learning. Unlike in-the-moment interactions with students, watching video enables us to slow down and more closely examine student-to-student exchanges. This affords us a unique opportunity to learn about students’ mathematical thinking. Several months ago, I began watching and discussing video footage of elementary mathematics classrooms with a group of colleagues. We were using the footage to study...
read moreA Kindergarten Q&A: Numbers Represent Quantities
As we said in the original post, our ideas for our blog are wide-ranging. We are excited to have a space that offers us the opportunity to answer common questions from the field. This Q&A is the first of that type of blog post. Have questions you’d like to see answered? Email us. Question: How do Kindergarteners learn to write the numbers, and use them to represent quantities? Answer: We are frequently asked about how Investigations supports young students in the development of numeral...
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