Counting Collections

Hi everyone!

I wanted to share a new part of my math block. This summer, we learned about "Counting Collections" and were asked to try it on in our classrooms this year. I think it's a great idea and tried it out this week for the first time!

Here's some background info on Counting Collections:

It's really similar to Counting Jars that I've seen all over the internet. Basically, you ask students to count objects and somehow record how they did it. 

At our training, the University of Washington had been piloting their research at a nearby school and brought some teachers to talk to us about it. We watched this video, which was filmed at a nearby school, and UW worked with this school also!


Counting Collections: Kindergarten - a common core classroom friendly exercise from Luna Productions on Vimeo.

This summer, I got my counting collections ready by collecting random things--bottle caps, shells, erasers from the Dollar Spot, etc. I ordered these cosmetic travel bags to use as storage. So far they are working out well!

When I introduced it to the kids this week, I told them that I needed their help to find out how many things I had in each bag. They were super excited and motivated to figure it out! I had them work with their reading partners and let them go at it! I was SO impressed at what I saw! I even recorded a little bit of one pair counting together:


At the end, we shared a few different ways that we recorded. I saw a lot of differences in their recording... some students used the paper as a mat and didn't write anything at all.


A lot of students had trouble writing the actual numbers, but I don't blame them since we've only learned up to #4 officially so far. I saw some great team work and counting strategies--some kids were taking turns counting, others were counting together.

Check out this amazing recording sheet!

Some kids were laying out their objects in lines.

I was just so excited about everything I was seeing, and I can't wait to do it again! I can see so many benefits to counting collections and it was relatively easy to set up. I love that they work in partners together. Teamwork is one of the biggest "life-skill" type topics that I feel is essential to careers later in life. They practice counting actual objects instead of just rote counting. They can problem solve and figure out what counting strategies work for them. They practice recording their thinking and how they counted.

I also added my recording sheet as a FREEBIE in my TpT Store! Enjoy!



3 comments: