Power of 10

During our Explore+4, Mrs. Casper has been running a station for small groups using a program called Power of Ten. It has been fabulous so far!

The basic premise of Power of Ten is to familiarize students with various ways of representing ten.  This might seem like a bit of a primary exercise for middle years students to participate in, but when we look at where there are holes in our students' numeracy learning, it is often with their number sense that these have originated.  If we are to fill the gap at all, we need to meet our students where they are at, especially during station-based activities.

So far, my students have been using ten frames as the basis for the games they play. I am encouraged by the growth that we have seen already. For example, a student that looks at two ten frames representing ten and four is more likely to quickly shout out "FOURTEEN!" today, whereas a few short weeks ago that same student may very well have counted each of the fourteen parts individually.

Think about the number sense related to that task! First, the student has to understand that a full ten frame will always represent ten. Then, they need to quickly recognize that four dots represents four, no matter where they are on the ten frame. Finally, they need to quickly process that ten plus four is fourteen, and feel confident about this.

Zero > 1, 2, 3...?

Today, Ms. Casper shared a picture book with us at the end of math class. It was called Zero, and was written by Kathryn Otoshi.

The message to the story was that we are wrong to assume that zero has no value, and that without zero our entire counting system would be completely different. I don't know about you, but I'm quite glad that we don't use a base-9 system for counting!

I remember being a young teacher and having the chance to meet the legendary constructivist math guru, John Van De Walle. He insisted, to the point of being offensive to some teachers in attendance, that we had no concept of the importance of zero to our number system. Throughout the course of an afternoon, he proved that he was right, and it was an important lesson to learn.