Groups of 10 and leftovers

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SWBAT use their understanding of tens and ones to represent number up to 99.

Big Idea

My students have mastered counting by tens, but we are continuing to practice the skill while also learning about the place value of tens numbers.

Rev Them Up

5 minutes

Counting chains are quick and fun and my kiddos love to do them.  As soon as I tell them to get in a circle, the giggling begins. 

I tell students: Please make a large circle around the perimeter of the room. We are going to practice our counting chain, but today we are counting by 10's. I will pick someone to start with 10 and then he or she can send the counting to the left or right.

Whoever I pick will say 10, then the next student 20, next 30, and so on until we each 120. Then I will start the chain again to 120, so that everyone has a turn.

Whole Group Interaction

10 minutes

CCSS have provided a more precise focus when it comes to place value. In the past, I taught a number was made of tens and ones and we would practice this all year by counting how many days we had been in school. The kids would watch how the ones were changed to tens every ten days by adding straws and eventually we would achieve ten sets of ten straws to build a set of 100.

The Common Core Standards have broken down the concepts of place value into simpler steps that build on one another. For starters, my little ones started to learn the base ten system with ones while in Kindergarten. The CCSS provides a connection to this in first grade by having students learn that ten ones can be grouped into a set of ten. We started this unit with learning about this idea, and extending it to see how ones can be added to a ten to build numbers to 20.

This lesson will continue stretching my students' understanding of place value. It will have my students reviewing what tens and ones blocks represent and then practicing creating their own representations of numbers through 99.

My students pay more attention to me if I can find activities that get them up and active. I found a site that offers very engaging ideas on many math and literacy topics:  I will use this idea to give my students more practice with building numbers with tens and ones. Look at the Military chant video of my students participating in the song.

After we finish with the song, I will follow with the idea to label so many of my kids tall (a ten) or small (a one). If they are a tall, they must stand straight and tall.  If they are a small, they must bend and wrap their arms around their shins. For example, I will use 5 students and label 3 of them tall and 2 of them small (Small, tall, small, small pic). We will count the 3 tall, 10, 20, 30 and then the ones, 31, 32. You can see a picture in the resource section of my students lined up to give us a problem to solve. We will do more examples like this until everyone has a turn to come up and build a number and to stay at their desk and help state what the number is. As the students stand tall or bend over, I am going to draw sketches of the base ten numbers we are creating on the chalkboard to represent the students as tens and ones. Then after we solve what the number is I will write the number on the board next to its model. This will review what I've taught them about how to quickly sketch the base ten number representations.

Independent Practice

10 minutes

Need: construction paper for each student

I say: Students we will be using what we learned about tall's and small's to build some more numbers, but instead of us using our bodies, we will draw tens and ones the way I was doing on the board. Draw a line down the middle of your page and then across. This should divide your paper into four sections, flip it over and do it again on the back. I will write 8 different numbers on the chalkboard. Write one number in each box and draw the tens and ones for each number. 

I have students represent a variety of numbers so that I can get a sense of the range of mastery: 10, 86, 23, 11, 92, 45, 63 and 19. will be walking around the room and checking my student's progress during this independent practice time. I will have our base ten blocks on hand in case I have any students who are having a difficult time creating their model for a number. If I have multiple students who need assistance I will gather together at our meeting table.

Check out the pictures of one student's work in progress and a piece of completed work.


5 minutes

I am going to close today's lesson by going back to our tall, small game again. The kids absolutely loved it. I will do 2 problems only so it will go quickly. I will use half of my class for one problem and half of my class for the other problem. This will serve as a review of our topic for today.