 This is
a fun counting by feet book that counts by ones to ten and then by tens to
one hundred. There are surprises along the way though and the
illustrations by Randy Cecil are fabulous. I have used this book with
students from Grade 1 to 7 and no one has called it childish.
There are endless possibilities for using this book but I will
outline a recent Grade 2 experience followed by recent Grade 6
experience so that you can begin to see the possibilities and the types
of outcomes that are possible.
After first reading the book we made about 200 cards by scanning each
creature and then printing on the lowest grade colour. The cards were
then laminated. It has been pointed out to me that this is possibly in
breach of copy write so I am in the process of looking for clip art that
will allow me to do the same activities.
Resources
You will need sets of cards that each have one of the following on
them:
snail, boy, dog, insect, spider, crab
The Activities
Two activities for the Grade 2s are linked at
the top left of this page as Mental Routine and Problem Situation.
For Grade 6s, use the same mental routine, but
beef up the questions a bit. Then ask the students to take work in
groups to create an array of cards that show 100 feet. This is
interesting to watch as they often use a count all strategy rather than
apply even simple strategies such as starting with the crabs and
counting by 10s, or matching numbers of legs to make 10s, e.g., the dog
and the insect or the boy and the spider.
Ask the students what percentages of feet
belong to crabs/boys etc.
When they are confidently working with
percentages out of 100, ask them to increase the size of their
collection to 200 feet. Usually one or two students realise that
10% in this new scenario will mean 20 feet not 10. A heated discussion
can then be fostered in which the students argue and justify their
reasoning. Generally the majority of students begin to understand the
reasoning put forward by the few. Time now to switch to 50 cards.
Relationships begin to emerge!
It's time to try the Percentages mental
routine and the Sets of Feet problematised situation. |
