Clip 5/6: Lesson Number Operations Part E

Overview

Tracy Sola invites all of the transitional kindergarten students to come over to the table where multiple students had different answers. She reminds students of the problem scenario and asks them to “Remind me, how many did our squirrels start with?” Students respond, “Five!” and one adds “Yeah, and then we gave one away.” Sola asks, “Which friends have a picture that shows that story?"

She continues with another scenario in which one squirrel has four nuts and gives two away to a friend. Students share their answers, arriving on the vocabulary of “equal.”

Teacher Commentary

When they were taking their color tiles out of our little bowl and putting it on their mat, I saw them all counting each one.

I figured that five would be just about the right bite-sized chunk. I was hoping that they might have had some experience with composing and decomposing five. I didn't know and I thought this problem would find out.

I thought ten would be too big. I thought ten would be a little too chaotic, too many manipulatives. So,I just decided to keep it to five, and when I saw them interacting, I think I validated that that was a good choice.