Figure 8.11 Rose’s counting in twentiesThe maths explored here included estimation and adaptation of known rules. Build-
ing on their partial understanding they used repeated addition and were able to
arrive at a total. Young children have a fascination with larger numbers and, pro-
vided they can see a purpose, will grapple with complex and challenging ideas.
Allowing children to explore and practise skills in ways they have chosen permits
them to enter a task at their own level: it also allows learning to be differentiated to
learners’ needs (Worthington, 1998a).Rose, 5:4, and Stephen, 5:1, were interested in the numbers of shoe sizes: their
interest had arisen from one of the children proudly showing his new shoes.
Stephen explained that numbers ‘go on forever’ and that there were just ‘too
many things to count in the world’ but they decided to see how far they could
count.They chose some strips of paper in the graphics area and each began to
write on a separate piece of paper, eventually agreeing that each strip should have
no more than the 20 numerals.When they had a total of five strips covered with
numbers they were unsure how to arrive at a total.
Rose’s response (Figure 8.11) shows how she was able to link her previous
knowledge of counting in tens to this new problem, by grouping pairs of tens. She
read the numbers as ‘10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100’. She explained that the
numbers between each line represented the numbers (20) on each of the five
strips of paper
Building on their knowledge of counting in tens, together the children were
able to count in twenties.The following day Stephen added two further strips of
1–20 and confidently wrote ‘10040’ (140) for the total number of their seven
strips (see also Alison, pp. 186 and 187).156 Children’s Mathematics8657part 2.qxd 04/07/2006 17:25 Page 156