Student Work Blog

I am analyzing question number 1. This task is asking the students to count by tens and ones. The big idea of this task is that it forces students to think about what number will come next in the sequence and with a number provided, if they understand how to count by tens and ones to get to the next number. This particular student said she knew that the boxes that go down (meaning the rows) you had to count by 10 and the boxes across (columns) you count by ones. She understood how to count by tens and used the number 189 to go back 10 for the first box then under 189 she counted 10 to get 199. At the given number 189, she knew that you have to count by ones so she got 190. I asked her if she could check her answer with the number 190 and she was able to understand that by counting by 10s she got to 200 and the number before it was 199 so she knew she was counting correctly and understanding the box problem. 

The students current mathematical thinking about this problem reveals to me that she understands how to count by tens and ones and not only that but can go back and check the answers using what she knows about how the boxes work. 

The questions that I have about this problem are:

1. Will the student understand how to count by tens and ones if the problem was set up a different way other than using the boxes?
2. Did the teacher teach the students a method similar to this but also incorporating counting by one hundred? 
3. Why did the curriculum choose to set up this counting method by using boxes such as these?

Ways I might answer them:

1. To answer my question, I would provide the student with problems that involved counting in a sequence such as those above but not use boxes. I would maybe do an in out sort of thing where I would place any number such as 165 in the in column, then 175 would come out and 185 would come out for the other.
2. To answer this question, I would have to ask my teacher how she taught this and if she taught them any other methods for counting by tens and ones. I am not sure if she has or not because every time I have been in the classroom she has taught it this way.
3. I am not sure why the curriculum chose this way. I would have to consult my teacher, the school principal, and even read books/articles on how the math curriculum decides to set up a counting problem like this.