“Young children reinvent arithmetic. Spontaneously or by imitating their peers, they imagine new strategies for calculation. They also learn to select the best strategy for each problem. The majority of their strategies are based on counting, with or without words, with or without fingers. Children often discover them by themselves, even before they are taught to calculate.”
― Stanislas Dehaene, The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics
How does counting support all areas of mathematical competence?
Choral Counting
Choral Counting
A Choral Count is a large group counting experience that helps students identify patterns in our number system and build number sense. The videos below include website along with a brief explanation of the learners’ behaviors and language during the Choral Count, and a final summary on the experience enacting the Choral Count including specific ways it affected the learners’ counting competence, number sense, place value, computation, and mathematical reasoning and communication.
Veronica Newsome
I completed my Choral Count with a small group of six 5th graders. I choose counting by 1/4s starting by zero so that the students could understand more about fraction patterns. During the choral count students were successfully able to count by 1/4s. I noticed our choral count started with whole numbers only, and I wish I would have included starting from a fraction as well.
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Students were able to comprehend the connection in patterns from each fraction column as each ended with the same fraction. One student was able to look horizontally (L to R) and noticed how 1 1/4 was added to get to the next number. The students noticed how the columns were similar by adding a whole number in each line when looking from top to bottom. I probed their thinking by questioning them on the types of numbers we had included in the choral count. We discussed how whole numbers, mixed fractions, and proper fractions were included. I then probed their thinking by questioning what pattern existed by looking horizontally from right to left.They noticed right away that it was a subtraction pattern, however, what exactly was subtracted became challenging. A student pointed out that left to right horizontally was subtraction as well. One student was able to observe that it was minus 3/4. Equivalent fraction number sense was included in which a student pointed out that 2/4 equalled 1/2.