SESSION TWO: 24TH SEPTEMBER 2013, TUESDAY

Second session with Dr. Yeap, what did we learn and solve today?

I’ve learnt new words today…

ü Subitize: able to perceive a number of items without counting.

ü How manyness: the quality or state of being many.

INTERSTING PROBLEMS OF THE DAY…

Problem 6: Beans! Take a random number of beans and count down by 1 or 2. The person to count to 0 is the winner.

This activity really requires us to think carefully and strategize when the number of beans got fewer. And after playing for a few times, we realized that we can actually predict who is the winner when there is left with 5 beans.

We also identified some “bad” numbers; which means when it’s our turn and the numbers of beans left are 3, 6 and 9; there is a high possibility that we are going to lose.

Problem 7: Ten Frames! Find out the different methods that we can solve “5 + 7 + 6” using ten frames.

As a class, we found many different ways. The most straight forward method; counting on; counting in fives, counting in sixes, counting in tens and many other.

I personally feel that this is a good learning approach to teach children addition and counting in tens. I would like to incorporate ten frames into my lesson plan and hopefully, it would benefit them and help them in their learning.

Dr. Yeap also shared with us on for people who are unable to do rational counting, there are 4 contributing factors:

1. Classify: unable to group the same items together.

2. Rote counting: unable to rote count in order.

3. One-to-one correspondence

4. Do not have the conceptual understanding of cardinal number (do not know how to appreciate that the last number uttered represents the size of the object.

*interesting fact

In the Jewish culture, the children in schools like to ask a lot of questions as their parents would ask them how many questions did they asked in school.

And lastly to end off with this video that Dr. Yeap shared with us. Very catchy and nice song to tell us about “Jack and the beanstalk” story.