t Collecrons

acrossa of objects with our young children.believing this I akeishahas lined up paintbrushes tableand is rolling them oneby oneto the side. would provide children;yjq[ rich oppoftlnitips to I l-Tyler and Auveen are wrapping pencils into practiceoral counting, develop. eflicient',counting bundles.Maya is organizing toy kangaroos,and stlategies, gro-{g4$ischs,rine.strntegic''i{sys, "record her partner, Max, is clrawinga pictureof how sheis ,numbers,and repre$enttheir thinking, Resealch doing it. What is going on in this classroom? shows that although counting is one of the best ways we know to help chilclrendevelopnnmber ideas,we senseand other importantmathematical schools. do not do nearlyenoughofit in elementary with counting to At the beginningof every schoolyear,the live- to Children need lots of experience at seven-year-olds Corinne A. Seeds University learn which numbercomesnext, how this nurnber is Elementary School (UES) spend several weeks sequence relatedto the objectsin front of them, "countingcollections." UES, the laboratoryschool and how to keep track of which ones have been of the GraduateSchool of Education and Informa- countedand which still needto be counted(Fuson tion Studiesat UCLA, servesa socioeconomically 1988).Experiencewith counting providesa solid foundation for future experiencewith addition, and ethnically diverse student population from multiplication,and division (National urban and suburbanLos Angeles. The classesare subtraction, Council2001). classes Research multiage, and the five- to seven-year-old Convinced by the literature as well as the outinclude childrenwho would be considered kindergartenand first-grade cornes we have seen with our students,we have students. part of Our work in counting collectionswas inspired made counting collectionsa fundamental by Megan Franke, a parent at our school and a what we do with young children at UES beginning in researcher mathematicsedncationand children's the first week of schoolgachfall. Wc hopethis articlc tliinking who has often worked in our classrooms. will provide a window on the processof counting as us Megan encouraged to try counting collections collectionsin our classrooms well as evide,nce can that everychild in our classrooms build his or her mathematicalskills by countingcollections.

Why Count Collections?

and ldentifyingGollections Beginning Counting the Process

Julie Kern Schwercltfeger,jks@ucla.edu, is a demonstration teacher at Corinne A. Seeds University EtementarySchool, IJniversityof California,LosAngeles"Angela Chan, achan@gsers ,ucla,edu,is a graduate student in urban schooling in the GraduateSchool of Educationand lnformation Studies, UCLA. They are staff developers with the Algebra Project, based at Center X, and instructors for Math Metltods in the teacher education program, all at UCLA.

At first, as the children are gettirrgto know the classroomand we are getting to know them, we have thern take an invcntory of objccts they find in the room, such as buckets of markers, pattern blocks, and Legos. We have also accumulated boxes of shells, keys, coins, bottle caps, and the
ChildrenMathematics lMarch 2OO7 Teaching

356

All of CopvriqhtO 2007 The NationalCouncil of Teachers Mathematics,Inc. www.nctm.org. rights reserved. from NCTM. or This materialmay hot be copied or distributedelectronically in any oiher format without written permission

'.
.L.
f,

@ F

o o g b' c L

like, all of which are availablefor the children to count.Later on, to adclvariety to what we haveon James and Theo usedtally marks to keeptrack of from home,includhand,childrenbring collections the collectionthey counted. ing objects such as hair clips, sugnr packets,toy pennies, seedpods, acorns, and corks. cars,beads, Tau,rr;r o*&*hee Initially, we simply ask the children to choose a collection,count with a partner,and recordwhat they countedand what their total was (seelig. 1). the Soonerrather than later we increase complexity of the task by asking the childrento also show us how they counted. l'igure 2a shows Tess and Ashley's recordingof how they countedchainsof ten links each.Wtile Ashley movedthe chainstwo .at a time from tlre table to the floor, Tesscounted out loud by twenties(fig. 2h). Their recordingnot helped them keep track of their collection but o-41y also clearly representstheir strategy. For childrenwho havehad amplepracticecountof 1i'om decide on how to group thern,our older children ing by ones,we {rnd that packages supplies the supply closet make excellent collectionsfor begin thinking in rnultiplesand ir.rvent ir-r.rpressive counting by groups.We challengethe clrildrento strategies countingtheir collections. for packcount without opening the shrink-wrapped Paperclips comein boxesof 100.lf tenboxes ages. are shrink-wrappedtogether,how many pairerclips How many paperclips are in the whole package? do we have if we include the haif-usedbox in the plastic bagscorne 125 to a Counting collections early in the scliool year Resealable classroom? box, so how many bagsare in a caseof ten boxes? servesas an importantassessment us: We get for paintshaveeightpansin a box. How can to know the childrenas we watch then count.We Watercolor conespondence we add those up without peekinginto the boxes? find out who can make one-to-one pushchildrenbeyondcounting by Thesechallenges and count consistently, who can "count on," who ones.No longer able to touch eachobject or even remembers what comes after 59, and who can

K$,\%i,K,#*g,re tVrW lfr

JEf- El cYube+

trffi

Y ,tU tttt rxt\,1rtlff lfl tr1l

NoticingWhat ChildrenDo and HelpingThem Notice What OthersAre Doing :

Mathematics / March 2OO7 Children Teaching

357

Tessand Ashley made chainsof links to facilitatecounting by tens and then by twenties. ;\
ut, .[tt .: lQ.df i,
Ir 6< |

-t tYr,':.

i;f
,lI
"-l

1r

t,i

h,/-{)
ea.alf VY ..

'$
.,1 | :tl,

a. Tess and Ashley's record of how they counted chains of ten linkseach

1:::) /

t-' tr i',r'

lvv'\t\/

then countsup his groupsby tens.AIex mightiuse a sticky note to write down.horylrl4qy.b,lpcks.she countedtoday so that she does not have to coutit them overtomorrow She will comeback to her tray labelecl"not cownted" and count on from where slie left off (fig. 3). A1l these strategies, coming straightfrorn the children,becometopicsof group conversation we gatheron the carpetat the end as of mathematics time. By the end of each hour-long sessionspent counting collections,some sfudents have counted nore thanone collectionand havemuitiple recording sheets, while othersare still in the midclle of their first counting project. Wc wrap Lrpthe sessioli by gathering on the carpet ancl slraring the children'scountingstrategies z]gl'oup.We begin as the next counting collectionssession revisiting by thesestrategies before we sendthe students to off continuecountingtheir currentcollections begiu or coulltlngrlew ongs.

g Somethin for Everyone: MultipleEntryPoints

VJVV\,, ';! '{'o/"

l/

\,i('

b. Tlreir recordingof moving the chains two at a time from the tableto the floor

At any given time, the stLldents any UES classin rooln erreat different points in their clevelopment of countingskills and number sense. onr nrultiIn age classrooms, where stndents from two difTerent gracle levels(for example, third graders) second ancl are cornbined, teachers continuallychallenged are to cl'eatecurriculum with multiplc entry points. Perhaps most convincingevidence teachcrs the for

record the numbersthey can count to. We watch to see if allyone is counting by twos or groupitlg objectsinto tens. Always, when we let the childrenclevelop their own strategies that make senseto.ihem, we are sulprisedand delightedby their thinkirg. We name each child's cour.rting strategyaltclencourage the other children to give the various strategies try. a The "Jackson way" might be to nroveobjectsto one side to help keep track of what has been counted and what has'not. Natalie's idea might be to use Dixie cupsto gloup beads;slreptits five treads a iD cup and then collntsup by llves.Jiu.uny might linc up his collectionof woodenpeopleinto "arnriesof ten." Oncehe hascovereda tablewith little annies, he rnight notice that some of the arrries ars larger than others.He then makesadjustments necesas sary so that eachgroupinghasfive rows ol'two and 358

Alex'sstrategyfor noting which blocks she has counted and which remain to be counted

5f0 Sk{hS fsurrritil yw*t1

2lerret:*
*i\ Fmnl4le

fWrl?ntreaa'rr

Teaching ChildrenMathematics /March 2OOz

that counting collections is valuablein our multiage classroomsis tlre easewith which we can engage development.

,sftetsh
how As we walk aroundthe room, we appreciate many different ways the children are approaching thejob at hand.Leo, who is just beginningto make between the objects one-to-onecorrespondence he touchesand the counting words he says, has brought a collection of pebbles from home. He loses track of which pebbleshe has countedancl which he has not. We stop to talk about how he courldhelp himself keep track. Insteadof just moving the pebbles to the side as he counts then, he the to puts a bowl in his lap; thenhe pushes pebbles the edge of his table and cottnts them as they drop into the bowl. At the end of mathematiostime, he will ask for help writing "56" in his mathematics journal and will draw a picture labeled 'pbls" to show what he counted. In the same classroomon the same day, and of showing the same seriousness purpose,Grace into families of livc groups tecldy bear counters while her paftller, Lindsey, points to two families at a time to help cbunt up by tens.At anothertable Spencerand his friends are making "one hundred" buildings out of one-inch cubes.They have agreed that each building will have two floors of fifty blocks each. The trouble comes when sevenfull buildings have been completedbut two buildings are incomplete.The boys are puzzling over how to combine their numbers.Y'et anothergroup is figuIing out how to count all the legs on the chairs in the classroom,a problem that requiresan organizational strategy(the chairs are occupied and so canof not be moved)and posesthe challenge counting by groups of four.

ti;
c

q !

and WorkingTogether Pushing OneAnother's ldeas Mathematical

We are encouragedby the range of challengesthat can so easily be createdto meet the wide range of We needsof the children in our classroorns. also find compelling evidencethat the children leatl a great deal from one another's strategies.Leo and Carlos have the job of counting markers from the supply closet.Someof the markerscome in boxes of ten and somein boxesof eight.Leo, who is just learning to read numbers, begins by separating boxes with an "8" on the cover from boxes with a "10" on the cover. As Leo makes a stack of the

For example,we often connt how many books are in our classr o o m s , a s s i g n i n gs m a l l t e a m s o f c h i l d r e n t o various shelvesand baskets.Of course,we want to keep the books in their places, so rather than bringing all the books to a central location and stackingthem into piles of tens,for example,each shelf or basket ends up with a label indicating the As numberof books on that shelf or in that basket. a group, we figure out how to add those numbers togethelto get our total. / March 2OO7 Mathematics Children Teaching

{
'i

@ o a

boxesof tens,Carloscountsout loud by ten.When they get to the boxes of eight markers, Carlos hesitates. spreads boxesof eight out on the He the floor and stops to think. Meanwhile,he seesLeo lining up the loose markers, thinking about how he could connt them. Carlos asksfor some of the loosetnarkersand placestwo markersnext to each box of eight to make tens.Leo, by his side,counts the remaining loose markersinto a basket.In the end,Leo hascountedup to 28 and,with a teacher's help, has written that numberon his paper so that he doesnot forget it. Carloshas reacheda total of 160.Although Carlosquickly saysthe total is 188, to the teacher asksLeo to help Carlosdouble-check seeif he is right. Leo sitsby Car'los's sideand takes hearingCarlos one pen at a time out of the basket, countby onesfrom 160to 188andjoiningin when he can. What do we think each child got out of this partnerslrip and this countingproject?Leo took on a counting project bigger than one he could have handled by himself. He watched Carlos gronp pens in ways that he himself was not ready to do and heard Carlos count out loud severaltirnes. Leo had opportunitiesto read numbers(the "8"s and "10"s on the boxesof rnarkers); practicea newly to acquired strategyfor keeping track (moving markers into a basketas he countedthem, just as he had moved pebblesinto a bowl on a previonsday); to

record his total (28); and to count out loud (from 1 to 28 and from 160to 188).And what did Carlos gain from the partnership? the Perhaps idea of adding the two pensto the boxesof eights came fiom the watchingLeo organize loosemarkers.Leo also provided a reasonfor Carlos to count orally by ones frorn 160to 188, a valuableopportunityhe would otherwisehave passedup. And Carlos, a whiz at at his countingbut not necessarily sharing methods, took on a valuable mentodng role. Together, the boys accomplished countingiob in a way that a they could not have on their own. The evidenceis abundantthat children benefit from wolking together.The classroomis full of conversation and problem solving. Not everyone agreeson countingstrategies. what happensif So Williarn durnpsout boxesof paperclips on the carpet while Cody startscountingthe closedboxesby havelots ofnegotiatingto do as they l00s? Partners decideon a collection,choosea placeto work, and figure out a strategy. Will one personcount while Will both children count all the the other records? tiles into cups of tens and then count up by tens together?Will the processwork if the partners start countingfrom oppositesidesof the pile until they to meet in the rniddle? Opportr.rnities learn to work as togetherare as abunclant opportunitiesto develop and countinsskills. numbersense

Notice,Ouestion,Extend
So what is our job as adultsas we watch children countcollections andas we learnaboutthe remarkable thingschildrencan alreadydo? How do we as teachershelp children rnove forward? We notice and name the strategies children are using; we ask questions provokechildren to think, articulate that their thinking, and sometilnestry a new strategy; "andwe extendtheir thinking. We recently taped two hour-long mathematics in in sessions a K-l classroom which childrenwere counting collections.Here are some of the quesask: tions we heardthe teachers "How do you know which ones you have countedand which onesyou have not?" "What were you doing yesterday to keep track?" today?" "Why did you switch strategies "Why did you decideto put those into cups o1'fifteens'l'' "How many cups did it take to get up to 150?"
Children Mathematics March 2OO7 / Teaching

350

"If you made anotherset of 10 cups' would therebe 150in theretoo?" "Can you explainto Cody what you aredoing now?" "Is it easierto countby tenstlranby eights?" "What are you going to do with all those looseotres?" "What will you do when you run out of countingcuPs?" "By looking at Natalie'srecording'what can you tell abouthow shecounted?" i)",-, "It looks like the two of you are using cliffer" 'r*:t Do strategies. you have a plan for how you ,",': "', ',r.1 "nt add your totalstogether?" will ,, out "Why did that tr-rrn to be a tricky collecr',-,i'r't -) I tion to count?" t' "How are the two of you working together?" ,,1 ' "What will you clodifferentlynext time?" -,'i i .,.: '. : ' -[n addition to askllrgqueqtions, ourjob astqachJ .' ":

we make sure that counting collections is part of our weekly work, even when we are delving into units.We senda largeplasticjar othermathematics requestingthat a family provide home with a note! someobjectsfor us to coltnt, and about once each week. for the first few Ininutes of our mathematics hour, we countout theseobjectstogetheras a class. We savethe objectscounted-75 cotton balls, 28 pencils, 125 pasta shells, and so for:th-and put 'humber gallery," all labeled with their them in a quantity. we begin eachmathetnaticshour &And, of course, by countingorally-by onesstartirigat 85, by tens from 50. But that is the startingat 63, bttckwards subjectof anotherarticle.

References

worth talking about of , :. rernind onrselves strategias i, 'I later as we all sit togetheron the carp&t.Patterns -' and theseare helpf'ulfor planninginstruci" emerge, ',l, youngchildrenmay saymore thanone ',i. tion. Several 't '11 word per object, and so we group some counting of thesechildren togetherto practicetouchingand countingor droppingone item into eachcup of an interact with so many children egg cafion. Teachers hour and over the course in a given nrathematics of a day that theselittle recordswe keep as we rull becomeimportantat tlle end of the day to help us {igureout what is going well and what the children need next.

ancl Crntceptsof Nunr Fuson, K. C. Chiltlren's Cor.nttittg 1988. ber. New Yolk: Springer-Verlag, National ResearchCouncil. Addittg It Up: Helpirtg CltilciiLdtel.qan dren Learn Matlrcmutics, edited by J. Kilpatrick, J. .wha!,thss,al er$.,i snlq Fesp,uffosh,af t SwalTord, and B. Findell' Mathematics Leartring jqJ:::dowtl the',room,'we' , "a 4o As we walk through Study Committee, Cetiter for Education, Division of to onr*ticky note"si.both document , .t pul obser1ations Washand BehavioralandSocialScieuces Education. '' ' . . what the childrencan,doat that tirne of'year'an{ to 2001. A ington,DC: NationalAcademyPress,

Keepingthe CountingGoing
A11 of this negotiating, organizing, and counting takes tirne. Early in the year; for a period of about three weeks, we are likely to devote our full hour every day to counting collccmathematics that countingcgllections convinced tions.Tcachers in serueand thcir students'growtlr nuurber crihances collcctlons oltenrcvlsltcounnng strategtes coutlting rntlrethanonccdtrringthc yeur.Thcy lind that what the chilclrenare able to do in the spring is far different from what they could do in the fa1l,attdthis measure of accomplishmentand growth is apprcciated by both children and teachers. To keep the counting going throughout the year, I Match 2OO7 Mathematics Children Teaching 361