On my most
recent field experience in a first grade class, I was fortunate enough to work
with a very creative teacher who had fabulous lesson plans. One of my favorite activities she did with
the kids was a particular math lesson that taught place value of tens and
ones. She created her own mats, but I
was able to find a copy of a similar tens and ones mat that can be used for the
activity by just clicking on the link above.
For the
activity you will need pretzels (sticks, not rods) for the tens and cereal, M
& M’s, Skittles, raisins, or anything small to represent ones. The teacher I worked with used pretzels and
Skittles. You will also need to download
the tens and ones mat or you can very easily make one yourself using
construction paper. My cooperating
teacher used two different colors, red for tens, green for ones to make a
bigger contrast. At the top left, she wrote
tens and on the top right she wrote ones, then laminated and gave each student
one. The students were also given some pretzels and Skittles, as well as dry
erase markers.
The students
were asked to look at the ELMO where the teacher wrote a problem down on her
tens and ones mat. For example:
23
+21
The 2 was lined up in the Tens red side and
the 3 on the green ones and the same for 21 with the 2 on the red and the 1 on
the green.
Then for
manipulatives, the students placed 3 skittles next to the 3 on the green side and
1 Skittle next to the 1 below on the green.
On the red, two pretzel sticks were placed on the mat next to the 2 on
the red tens place and the 2 more below.
The students counted the ones and wrote the answer, then counted the
tens and wrote the answer below.
Then they
erased their problem and a new one was placed on the ELMO for them to
follow. This was gradually built up
until they had to regroup by replacing the ones with a pretzel stick because
there were more than 9.
If the students
worked hard and showed good cooperation, they were allowed to eat the Skittles
and pretzel sticks (a good incentive to work hard). Needless to say, the students remained completely engaged throughout this lesson. Utilizing both technology and food were excellent strategies for motivation. I loved this lesson and will plan on using it
in a variety of ways when I have my own class.
