another cube off, coloring another cube, and so on, matching one-to-one as he
colored. I thought this was a good way for him to solidify his one-to-one corre-
spondence, but I also wanted him to practice counting and to think about how
the quantities that went with the numbers compared with each other. So, I told
him to be sure to count them because that was part of the important math in this
activity. “After all, the game is called Grab and Count,” I told him. I did notice
Kyle counting his cubes on most turns over the following days, and slowly his
counting started to be more accurate. He still generally used matching to record
the amount in his stacks—taking 1 cube off of the stack, coloring 1 cube on the
paper, taking another cube off, coloring another cube, and so on rather than just
coloring in the quantity he counted.
Latisha and Briana
Latisha and Briana made their way to Grab and Count: Compare on the third day
it was offered as a math choice. In mathematics, Latisha had difficulty counting
even small quantities of objects correctly, and Briana could get mixed up after 10
or 11. Over at their table, I noticed that Latisha and Briana were spending much
of their time coloring the paper cube strips and arguing over markers. In fact,
more than once Latisha colored the whole strips using what she called “girl col-
ors” without interacting with the actual cubes in any way, never mind counting
them up and figuring out which stack had more cubes. Briana would grab the 2
handfuls and build the towers, but the task of coloring the paper cubes to match
her stacks was challenging for her. She kept switching colors, starting over, and
arguing about who was using the pink marker. I reminded Briana and Latisha
what good partners do—work, share, take turns, listen to each other, and watch
each other count.
I also made the decision that I needed to play a couple rounds with the girls
to help them focus on just comparing the amounts without recording. When I
grabbed a handful of 7 and a handful of 8 and stacked my cubes, Briana immedi-
ately lined the stacks up next to each other and said, “This one has more,” indi-
cating the stack of 8. I asked her how many there were in each stack, and she
counted accurately. I then said, “So which is more?” She said, “8.” On the next
round we grabbed 7 and 9. Latisha grabbed the stacks and started coloring before
we had counted. She did not compare the stacks nor count the cubes. When I
asked her which stack had more she pointed vaguely toward her paper, not the
cubes. When I asked her how many cubes were in 1 of the stacks she shrugged and
went back to coloring.
Clearly the girls were having difficulty for different reasons, and clearly this
was not a good activity for them to work on together. I had Briana work with
MAKINGMATHEMATICSEXPLICIT