Many teachers are already back to school, with the rest of us soon to follow. I'm re-posting this updated (free) 'Count the Days in School' pack. If there is only one new math routine you add into your K-2 school day, this should definitely be it. 

Why? Let me count the ways! 
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- It only takes 1-2 minutes each morning. Very quick, very easy, very effective!
- Children love it (you must find a way to keep track of who has already had a turn to add the sticker to a 10 frame or you will have arguments on your hands).
- It provides a visual representation that children are directed to each morning of both number amounts (how big a number is) and place value information (tens/units, but also hundreds if you continue to count past 100 days, which I highly recommend). 
- It provides an easy way into early years Number Talks, while also providing that important visual representation that helps kids to really 'get' numbers, how they are constructed and how they can be partitioned. 

I've updated this pack to make it slightly easier to print and cut out. I've also included 3 pages of Number Talk ideas for the 3 different stages (K-2 / P1-3 / Reception-Year 2).

The main title for this display is 'We are counting the days in school'. In this pack, however, I've also included 4 additional titles that allow you to count: 
1) Days in the School Week
2) Days until Christmas
3) Days until Spring Break
4) Days until Summer

I know that there are some settings where counting smaller amounts (or more repetition of early counting skills) is important, so hopefully these additional sign options will help more people incorporate this routine into their classes in a way that is meaningful for their own pupils.

Welcome Back to School!

Like many teachers, I began our school year looking at place value concepts. Place value is so foundational to a child's understanding of maths that it always seems like the obvious place to start.

​Prior to this year, I've always taught in infants (K-2), so place value concepts focused mostly on 0-100, stretching to 1000 when I taught P3 (2nd grade/Year 2). I had a few children in P3 who were ready to go to 10,000, but for the most part, the class needed to focus on developing fluency with smaller numbers. To develop deep understanding of place value (like any maths concept), children need to follow the concrete - representational - abstract progression. So - cue getting out lots of cubes, counters, base 10 materials, etc during my infant years.

​But this year, I've moved to P5, so I needed to teach place value to 10,000 and 100,000 for some of my class. This is much more difficult to do at the concrete level - even having bought a class room set of Base 10 materials before I started teaching, I still only have 3 thousand cubes. And even if I hoard all the thousand cubes in the entire school (not that I even considered doing that!), I still could only model working with 10,000 for my class - I couldn't give each child a set of Base 10 materials that would allow them practise building these numbers themselves. What to do?

​As you can see from the above picture - I decided to make sets of Base 10 cards for my class. Granted, it's representational, rather than concrete - but that's still better than working only with the abstract concepts. I have made 12 sets of these cards (20 of each Base 10 value), so the children can use them with partners (I have 23 children in my class at the moment). I made an additional set for my magnetic white board by simply adding magnetic tape to the back of each card (several of the girls in my class take it on themselves to organise any cards I've used at the end of each maths lesson, so they stay relatively neat!).

I use these cards to give kids a visual representation of any 'number talk' equation I'm asking them to solve. This allows them to see that when you have 5 hundreds and you take away 3 hundreds, you have 2 hundreds left, etc. Having the visual available can help take some of the mystery out of working with larger numbers.

​Making the sets took a bit of time at the beginning of the year, but it's all easily guillotine-able, so it isn't as bad as it looks! And once the sets are made, you have them - so far, my sets seem to be holding up pretty well. Having 1 set between 2 children can seem like a lot, especially if you have a larger class. However, if you have your class work in groups, you could probably get away with making fewer sets.

​If you think these would be helpful in your own class, you can get the file by clicking on either picture.