My kindergarten class has been working on counting from 1 to 10. This week, my teacher wanted to test each student's ability to accomplish that task individually. The students were separated and had to cut out the gingerbread men that had the numbers 1 through 10 beneath them. By themselves, the students had to paste the pictures in order.
Although many of the students were able to accomplish this task, there were several of the students that really struggled with this. Some students somewhat knew how to numerically order the pictures and only mixed up a few. Other students seemed to be very lost and pasted the numbers in what seemed to be no particular order. This can be seen in the picture above. This particular student started off with correctly ordering number one and number two. He then got confused and followed that number with a 5 and then a three. I have noticed on other occasions, during math time, this student often says the numbers out of order and struggles with counting. He does do better at counting a number of objects or naming the numbers. I think this student needs a lot more one-on-one practice so that he can become more capable and confident when counting.
It's good that you note the student struggles, but what do you think these struggles specifically reveal about the student(s)'s mathematical understanding of this big idea (of counting)? Use the actual student work to hypothesize how it is that they are approaching the task of counting (saying that the way to advance the student's thinking is through "one-on-one practice" is not specific enough...try to specific a specific mathematical task or question).
ReplyDelete