Professional Learning Goals

• We developed our own capacity and understanding of how Rekenreks and Ten Frames allow students to communicate and demonstrate their understanding of number relationships
• We modelled and demonstrated to our students how to use Rekenrek and Ten Frames to effectively communicate their understanding of number relationships, as well as developing a variety of strategies when exploring numbers using the anchors of five and 10
• We collaborated and shared evidence and findings of the effectiveness of these tools for developing competency with number skills to our kindergarten team (10 teachers and nine DECEs)
• We developed an understanding of quantity and numerical relationships
• We developed our capacity and understanding of how Rekenreks and Ten Frames allow students to communicate and demonstrate their understanding of number relationships
• We collaborated and shared evidence and findings of the effectiveness of these tools for developing competency with number skills with our early years teams (FDK, Grade 1)

Activities and Resources

We realized from the onset that any exploration of the effectiveness of any math tool had to be based on a clear understanding of what math concepts we wanted to develop. So we met with a program specialist in our board and walked through three to five resources readily available at our school to help us understand what were the key concepts early years students need in order to develop good number sense.

Kindergarten Program 2016

Effective Guides to Mathematics, Number Sense, 1-3 Revised

Van de Walle, J.A., Karp, K.S. and Bay-Williams, J.M. (2016). Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally (9th edition). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.

Lawson, A. (2015). What to Look For. Pearson Canada.

From that point, we used the big ideas of number sense and numeration: Relationships, Quantity, Counting, Operational Sense and Representation to guide our learning.

Unexpected Challenges

Our challenges came in the form of one of our team members having to drop out and trying to provide release time for such a large early years team. Communication with board personnel regarding the grant money was extremely challenging. It was difficult to access the grant money and to get updates as to how much money we had left. Also, we were given an initial teacher supply rate and DECE supply rate and unfortunately these numbers were incorrect, which caused us to overspend our grant money. Fortunately, our admin saw our project had great value to our school and were willing to cover the additional expenses.

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

By building teacher capacity, student learning and development will follow. We were able to purchase a teacher demonstration Rekenrek for each classroom and 10 student Rekenreks. Now, teachers have a tool to help demonstrate and model number relationships and students have the tools to communicate and represent their understanding of numbers in a variety of ways from one to 20 (e.g., counting, addition, subtraction). The Ten Frames and Rekenreks allow students to physically represent the relationship between numbers (e.g., 11 is more than 10 because there is one more bead).

Sharing

Target Audience: Early Years Team (FDK, DECE, Grade 1)

Forum for Sharing: Half-day release for combined learning teams

Format:  Google Slides presentation

Exploration of games and resources online and in print

Introduction to Rekenrek, in-depth exploration of Ten Frames, apps and websites

A folder was created on Google Drive for staff to access blackline masters from the Van de Walle resource which had been purchased by our board for each school.

Project Evaluation

We feel that our project was a great success! Our staff were very positive and excited to start using the Rekenreks and Ten Frames in their classrooms. Other grade teams, particularly the Grade 1 team, would have loved to been part of the project as they saw the excitement and buzz with the Rekenreks. The true testament to our project will be in the fall when our kindergarten students enter Grade 1 and the teachers note the student’s deep understanding of numbers one to 20.