hard and that she would count by 1s. As her partner grouped objects by 2s or 10s,
Michele watched or joined in until the skip counting became too difficult. With
ongoing practice, Michele felt more confident skip counting but stumbled over
how to count the loose items, those that did not make a group. For example, she
once counted a collection of 53 buttons by putting them into groups of 10. She
had 5 groups of 10 and 3 loose buttons. She said, “10, 20, 30, 40, 50” as she counted
the groups of 10, and “60, 70, 80” as she counted the 1s.Despite being able to
recite the counting by 10s sequence, her mistake clearly showed that she had
difficulties keeping track of the different units she was counting by. Initially she
didn’t realize her mistake. The other children corrected her. Instead of simply
confirming that the other children were right, I asked Michele: “Can you say 60,
70, 80 for the 3 loose buttons?” Her answer was not immediate; she had to think
about the meaning of those loose buttons: Were they groups of 10s or groups of
1s? Ultimately, she responded that they were 51, 52, and 53. I asked her how she
knew they were not 60, 70, 80, to which she responded that she was counting
only 1 more button each time. I hoped that in the process of explaining her mis-
take, she would become more aware of her difficulties and keep them in her mind
the next time she counted groups of objects. In fact, when Michele made similar
mistakes later in the year, she smiled as if saying, “Uh! I made this mistake again,
but I know what is wrong!” She became more aware of her mistakes and was able
to self-correct, an important skill in the learning process.
Counting at Snack Time
One of our weekly support group sessions took place during the last period on
Fridays. During these sessions, the students were usually very tired and didn’t have
much patience for struggling with hard ideas. They suggested that we have a
snack on Fridays. I decided to incorporate counting into our snack time. Using
this routine gave the children a lot of experience counting and provided me with
many informal assessment opportunities. We counted orange slices, candy bags,
and chocolate bars. We compared the number of hard candies in different pack-
ages. The children loved it! They didn’t care if they didn’t have the treat until
the very end. They really cared about knowing how many there were.
One Friday, Michele brought in 3 bags of popcorn that she wanted to share
with us. As we were getting ready for snack time, Michele said, “I have an idea!
We can count how many pieces of popcorn there are!” Inés responded, “But that
is too hard!” “Not if we count them by 10s!” said Michele. “We will only count
the big pieces. You can eat the small ones.”
I could not believe Michele spontaneously suggested counting by 10s given all
the struggles she had faced when counting different collections by 10s, 5s, and 2s!
Assessing and Supporting Students to Make Connections