Archive for August 11th, 2010
Skip Counting by 5’s in Guided Math lessons
Skip counting by 5’s is an essential skill. It builds an important foundation for multiplication. We have to make sure that our students are doing more than just skip chanting. There are several activities we can do to build conceptual understanding, procedural fluency and problem solving skills.
Building conceptual understanding:
1. I have the children stand up in front of the classroom and we skip count their hands by fives. We then make this into a hand skip counting poster. In small guided groups we build snap cubes into towers of five and then skip count them. In follow up centers the children have several cards that they have to build in towers of five to represent and skip count the number. On a concrete level, the students can get blank scaffolded organizers where they have to line the bears up in rows of five.
Pictorial Representation
After the children have plenty of opportunity to practice with physical objects I have them show the representation with drawings. They can color in snap cube pictures or bears to represent the skip count.
Abstract Level
On the abstract level, we sing songs and do chants ( http://www.havefunteaching.com/songs/song-lyrics/counting-by-fives-song-lyrics.pdf).
http://www.songsforteaching.com/jackhartmann/countby5s.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0m3SxaQVI8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkPhj48qlpg&feature=related
Students also practice with number grids by coloring or circling by 5’s.
There is also a center where the skip counting by five cards are all mixed up. The students use a timer and race themselves to put the cards in skip counting order.
In terms of daily routines, you should add a nickel each fifth day to reinforce counting with money.
Another way to practice is to do dot to dots.
http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/skip-count-dot-to-dot-IV
(See Post: Tallies: A special way to skip count by 5’s).
Resources for Skip Counting by Fives:
http://www.mathwire.com/strategies/count5.html
http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/number_patterns5_10/
http://www.printactivities.com/Mazes/CountingBy5s-Mazes.shtml (there are tons of sheets for practicing skip counting by fives on this site…they offer plenty of opportunities to differentiate).
http://www.education.com/worksheet/article/count-by-fives-first/
http://math.about.com/library/Worksheets/Countingby5e.pdf
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