On Monday I challenged the students counting abilities!

On each table I dumped a large amount of counters or uni fix cubes. They then, as a group, had to estimate how many were there without touching. I then asked one student from each group to grab a handful and count home many were there.

Most students counted by touching each thing as they counted in 1s (1,2,3,4,5 etc.)

We discovered that if we had to count the whole amount by 1s it would take a long time.

We then had the suggestion that maybe we could group them into 2s and count that way.

We discovered that the pile now looked smaller than when we started because they were not all bunched on top of one another.

We then started to count and realise there still could be a quicker way, 10s!

We then checked our first estimation and discovered some were pretty close and some were way off.
It was great to see the team work, active thinking and communicating happening during the lesson too, especially when having to count the group of counters and add all the amounts together.