Decomposing Numbers - Guided Math Ideas

Hi again! I am thrilled to have been able to return to work today! After having 2 and a half weeks off recovering from surgery on my hand, I was absolutely chomping at the bit to get back to work with my little kiddies - and they certainly did not disappoint!

I would like to share some ideas I have used myself when beginning to work on decomposing numbers, but before that I wanted to share some photos from today.

Last week I shared a post all about hands on activities for learning word families, and I had a question on another post about whether I do these activities as a whole class or in small groups, or how they look in my own classroom.

I played a game of 'Hop it Out' today with my little munchkins and I thought I would show you an example of how I like to tweak games to suit the group size. The pictures on the right is the one I shared in my post last week, which is a great set-up for a small group situation. For this size grouping my kiddies would use a teddy to help them 'hop it out' and we would use the cards on the carpet. You can read about it HERE.

The picture on the left is from today - the same activity, just in a whole class setting. I had my kiddies sitting in a semi-circle, leaving enough space for my hoops. I started by showing the whole class the picture (ideally I would be using larger pictures and letters), and had the kiddies think about the sounds they could hear in the word. Next, one child hopped up and we sounded out the word. After this we went back through the word and spelled it out using the letter cards. We also had a little practise reading words by putting a word in each hoop and having the kiddies toss beanbags into the correct hoop as I said a word.

This is just an example of how I like to tweak games and activities I find to suit my classroom. Once you start, it is really easy to tweak activities like this.

 Anyway, on to the REAL post...

I haven't got any clever names or such for these activities, so you might just have to cope with my terrible explanations today. These activities are all about different quick and easy ways to decompose numbers. I have used small numbers to make the activities simpler, but I will eventually get around to sharing ideas for larger numbers.

For this activity I have the kiddies look at tens frames (given one focus number at a time), quickly identify the number of dots, and then talk about how you see the dots. This is a great stepping stone for subitizing and number recgonition. This is a great oral activity to do with a whole class with large flash cards. You don't even need to print cards. Just photocopy a tens frame multiple times and either draw on the counters or use sticky dots. Or even better, use a small magnetic whiteboard and magnetic counters to show numbers quickly and easily.

This is such an important skill that repetition is the key. To avoid my munchkins getting bored I like to mix it up with different manipulatives - blocks, teddy bears, two-sided counters and beads are just a couple of ways you can keep this concept fresh for your own kiddies. In each activity, give the kiddies a starting number and have them experiment to decompose their number, show it, and record it.

Who doesn't love bowling? And I just adore these little 'Old McDonald's Farm' skittles I picked up at a clearance store, and so do my kids! You can make your own with old bottles with a little rice in the bottle. I have a set made up with mini coke bottles, rice inside, a foam sphere on top and painted with bright acrylic paints which work just as well :)

This was is great for whole class activities it is much larger and all kids love playing with beanbags.

More ways to show decomposition. I have found that sometimes it can help to show the different parts in separate containers. I also like to use my flash cards with tens frames on them to help kids visualise the numbers.

And this is a quick game which my kiddies enjoy playing in my guided math groups for decomposing the number 10. They each have 10 cubes to begin with and a blank tens frame, whiteboard and marker, and a die. The kids roll their die and place that number of cubes in the tens frame. They they work out how many more will make 10 by looking at the empty squares and write their response.

Lastly, this is a very cute idea I found over at the Math Coach's Corner. Donna has shared a few different ideas for how to use these cards within a guided math context, which you can check out HERE.

Anyway, that's all from me :)

Hope you have a great night all and... TGIF!!!!!