Sunday, February 23, 2014

Teen Numbers

Teen numbers often confuse children since the verbal counting sequence makes absolutely no sense and is never repeated.  Many of my ESL students say "seventy" when they mean "seventeen" and so on.  To help them with this problem, I often label the numbers with their written names on a 120 chart so they can see the different letters and know that seventeen is supposed to end with the /n/ sound.  Aside from this, it is the first time they unitize a "ten".  My favorite go to for teaching the idea of ten ones also being known as a "ten" is the ten frame.  It is so visual for them-they can actually "see" a ten! I do this on our calendar board. I put a  sticker on a ten frame for every day of school, kind of like the straw chart that many people use.  Then we count the tens and how many extra ones we have.  To help them with the concept of teen numbers, I have made a file called "Ten Frames to Practice Teen Numbers" and uploaded it to TPT!  Check it out! My kids play number match right now, but you can also play memory, one more/one less, war, bingo or anything else you can think of!  The cards that go with the ten frames are differentiated to meet the needs of all learners in your class! This is easily our new class favorite!  Enjoy:)

1 comment:

  1. I never made the connection that not only is understanding higher numbers difficult for many children, so is saying them! Not being able to read a number when it is written out likely adds to the frustration that children feel when it comes to math. I also agree that adding a visual aspect to teaching math helps it become much more concrete and easy to comprehend. I notice that young children have trouble wrapping their head around numbers bigger than 10 so giving them something that they can see and touch is very helpful. I definitely look forward to using math games in my classroom for all students. I think that they appeal to many different learning styles and add amusement to a generally anxiety-ridden subject.

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