We started today’s math lesson with a dot talk. These number talks provide students with opportunities for counting, building fluency, one-to-one correspondence, conservation of number and subitizing. We add in some oral and written language skills as we talk about and record our thinking.

I always start by showing a group of dots and ask, “How many dots do you see? How do you see them?” The conversation develops from there with the students’ answers guiding the direction.

Today we worked with 6 dots.

Next, we moved onto a new math game for our class – “Closer To The Target Number”. You can find game instructions on the math games page on this blog. Look at the top of the blog for the page.

This week we are focusing on sorting!  We’ve started talking about attributes and different ways that we can sort or organize a variety of materials.  We’ve sorted by colours in different ways and today we talked about size.  Literacy skills are integrated in as well as we build our vocabulary through oral and written labels.

Parents:  You can continue the learning at home by including your child when you are organizing things at home from kitchen drawers to closets to mitten bins! Ask your child how he/she would sort a collection of items at home. Be sure to discuss their reasons for sorting!