Making 10 and 20 -We’ve been exploring numbers a lot in our classroom this year. I am by no means an expert but I am slowly seeing my students grow with their number flexibility and discoveries.
The first few months of school we have been doing lots of exploring with manipulatives, apps, group discussions, and more. I would like to share a few things that have worked really well in helping us with our number sense. My favorite purchase this summer was my Ten Frame Trays from Oriental Trading. (see photo below)
We used these trays with counters to make 10 in as many different ways as we could. We filled up our trays with 2 colored counters, some red and some yellow, and then recorded the math facts in our math journals. As students became better at making 10 we moved on to make a 20.
The trays worked nicely to make addition and subtraction problems like a fact family.
20-15=5 Â 20-15=5 15+5=20 Â 5+15=20 Â First subtract the red counters, then the yellow, then add red and yellow, then add yellow and red. I have seen others use egg cartons and cut off the ends to make FREE ten frame trays.
We used lots of math ideas from Brown Bag Teacher Shake, Shake, Spill was a big hit with my class. See her post to learn more. She also suggests using cuisenaire rods. She uses nice little snap together ones.I just happened to have tons of the old style ones and dug them out of my closet and students absolutely loved using them. We made 10 with my struggling students and more advanced students made 10 using 3 numbers and also 20 with as many numbers as they wanted.
Add some technology…
Math slide is a fun FREE app  (you get 2 play all 10 games twice). It is multiplayer game for 1-4 students. If you are a class that shares iPads this would be a great one to check out. Students love to see if they can beat their friend and it is also fun to play against the teacher. They slide different numbers to the center to represent what is shown in the picture. The first player to slide their answer wins that round. The one to get rid of all their items in front of them first is the winner. It starts out very simple and then gets harder. Since we are 1:1 iPads we should get lots of use out of this app as they play on each others iPads.
Number Rack is a FREE math tool that is great for representing any number. It helps children to see the numbers in different ways. You read the beads from right to left so you start with the beads on the right and move the ones to the left to represent the number you want. What is so nice about the app is you can add lots of racks of beads to make large numbers and use it in n lots of ways. Check out my next posts to see how we used it to help us with rounding. You could use it with the app Pic Collage Kids. (See more about pic Collage Kids here) and take screen shots of the number rack and then add them to make a collage of friends of 10. Number Rack is also a web based so you could use on Chrome Books or display on your smart board.
We also played this fun ARRR friends of 10 game I made. Students earn counters (or make it more fun and use fake pirate gold) by making 10, 20 or even higher than 20 to challenge my best students.
But Beware don’t pick a skull or the poison or you lose a coin. You also get a free coin for picking a smooth sailing ship or a YOHO YOHO monkey. You can find it here in my Number Sense Set of Games and Activities.
Now for a Limited Time Freebie. Check this link to get your freebie of 10 frame Trolls Scoot. It will be free until Halloween, October 31st and then will be available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store Trolls Scoot.Â
***This post contains affiliate links for Amazon. Â By purchasing an item on the Amazon site using these links, I will receive a small commission on your purchase.***
