I am back for another week of 'peek at my week' with the amazing Mrs Wills!
Last week, I told you that I would be sharing my plans for my 'Number Groups'. We work for 10-15 minutes, 2-3 times a week on targeted skills in the 'number' strand of our mathematics syllabus. If time permits, I would throw in a extra couple of rotations through the week - the more practice, the better!
This week, I have also included a long range plan of topics. This is VERY flexible. You may choose to repeat a particular skill through to the next week, if you feel a second week of practice would be or more benefit to a particular group. Please note however, that the different skill areas (e.g. 'numeral identification' - are repeated twice a term at least, and throughout the year, to continually revisit and repeat activities and skills.
For week 2, I would focus on 'Counting'. Students will be at various stage of development in counting.
To find out where they are, you will need to dedicate a special time for a quick assessment. It should not take longer than 20 minutes to get through a class of 20 students, if you have everything out ready, and have the rest of the students working on some independent work.
Have a pile of counters/chips on your desk. Ask students to come to see you individually. Present them with 7 counters from your pile (don't count them out). This is the important part! Watch what they do. You may get a range of responses. You want to watch and see if they can count out a set of objects and know that the number they finish on is the total number of the group. Are they touching one counter and saying one number word? Or are they rushing and skipping over a few numbers as they touch, out of time, with their words?
You are looking for 1:1 correspondence.
If a student cannot do this, they are in Group 1. Don't ask them to do any more counting. Give them a sticker and tell them they are wonderful!
If students can do this, you can then ask them to get 14 counters for you, from the big pile. Here, you are seeing how they cope with larger numbers. Try again with 26. Are they confident? Could they be better? This is teacher judgement, and comes with experience. Remember it is only week 2, so your students are learning valuable skills from just being in a group and participating in an activity. Don't get too bogged down in the assessment at this stage. Part of your job is to also observe students as they work with their activities. If you find you have made an error in your groupings, don't be too hard on yourself, it happens! Just make a note of it, ready for the next time you cover this skill area.
The students you put in groups 2 and 3 will have 1:1 correspondence, but they need more practice with counting out a larger set accurately. You should also put students in these groups that may need extra practice with numeral identification with numbers to 20 (based on your assessment from last week).
Put very confident students, and those demonstrating early advanced strategies (counting multiple chips to get the total), into Group 4.
I have listed 2 activities for each group. Groups 2 and 3 are at the same level this week, as that is where most of the students will be. These plans can be easily adapted to suit other groupings if you find you need to.
You can access links to all the resources used, in my Powerpoint file. Just access the file in 'slideshow' mode to make the links active.
One of the activities is a new freebie in my TpT store. You can find it here:
Throughout the week, I would also be doing mini lessons for the whole class, on correct counting of objects. You need to specifically demonstrate to a lot of little-learners, how to touch and slide objects as they count, to maintain a correct total. Show them how easy it is to double-count an object, if they don't move it away from the group as they count.
Thanks so much for visiting and having a 'peek' in to a sample week of mine! I hope it has helped you a little!