Counting Collections with Preservice Teachers

September 30, 2019

This week's blog discusses my PST experience with Counting Collections. Counting Collections is a practice in mathematics where students count objects presented in a bag. The goals is to practice oral counting and to develop more sophisticated methods in counting. Through this practice, students develop oral counting skills, develop efficient counting strategies, group objects strategically, and record their thinking behind their strategies (Schwerdtfeger & Chan, 2007) . Like any open-ended task, students are doing the math instead of passively counting without purpose.

Two of my PST were challenged to count Family Counters. These are counters in the form of men, women, and pets of various colors. I wanted to ease them in the counting ritual. I asked PST to count the objects to determine the amount contained in the bag and to record how they counted. At first, they contented by ones and recorded their findings. I asked them if this methods was efficient. They agree for larger number counting by ones would take too long.  I asked them to chose another method. The PSTs counted by 2's. From their count and recordings, they notices they had 18 groups of 2 or 36 objects. I know this number is low; however, I wanted to ease them into the activity. I asked if there was a more efficient way. They group objects by 10's and notices it took 3 groups of 10 plus 6 more to make 36.

Next week, I will continue counting collections to include larger quantities. I have a mixed group of early childhood and elementary PST so they need experiences with larger quantities. The goal of this experience is to give PST exposure to the activity so that they can utilize effectively in their future classrooms.

References
Schwerdtfeger, J. K. and Chan, A, (2007). Counting collections. Teaching Children Mathematics
         13(7), p. 356-361.

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