Mathematical Emphasis
Investigation 1—How Many Are We?

• Developing and using strategies for counting
• Relating counting to the quantity of items in a group
• Using one-to-one correspondence
• Exploring two-to-one correspondence
• Representing data in a variety of ways
• Looking at different representations of the same data set
• Sorting objects into groups by attribute

Investigation 2—What Did You Eat for Lunch?

• Collecting, recording, and representing data
• Organizing a set of data in more than one way
• Noting similarities and differences in related objects
• Sorting by attribute into two groups
• Sorting a set of objects in more than one way
• Discussing the information in a data representation

Investigation 3—Collecting Data About our Class

• Composing survey questions
• Gathering and recording survey data
• Comparing the sizes of different groups in a survey
• Making sense of data representations
• Sorting by attribute into two groups
• Describing categories for a sort

Investigation 4—Who’s Here? Who’s Not?

• Solving a mathematics problem based on data
• Building a model or making a representation to explain a problem solving strategy
• Counting and comparing sets of objects or people

Tips For Helping At Home

Throughout this unit, your child will be collecting real data from classmates. In one activity, children identify their favorite part of lunch. They learn to sort favorite foods into categories and make a large class representation of the information. While working on this unit, you may want to involve your child in home activities that also involve collecting and representing information.

• Continue to count things around the house with your child. How many cans of soup are on the shelf? How many spoons are in the drawer? Ask your child to keep track of the counts and find a way to communicate that information to someone else.
• Play “same and different.” Find two similar objects, such as a shoe and a boot, or a T-shirt and a shirt with buttons. With your child, take turns describing how the two things are the same and how they are different.

Vocabulary Terms

Attributes

Characteristics of an object

Data

Information that is collected

One-to-one Correspondence

Relating one number to one object when counting a set

One-to-two Correspondence

Relating a pair of objects to one number when counting sets of pairs (2, 4, 6…)

Representation

A way of showing a concept using words, pictures, objects, or symbols

Mathematics Vocabulary Web site

Mathematics Strategy—One-to-One Correspondence

It is obvious to us as adults that if we put out a button for each student on the class list, there will be 25 buttons if there are 25 students. However, this correspondence is not always obvious to 5 and 6 year olds. Children at this age are just beginning to develop very basic ideas about how a model (a picture or set of buttons) can represent another set of things—like people in the class. Children may need to count a set several times to be satisfied that the number truly represents the same amount.

One-to-one correspondence is the ability to make sense of the idea that one model (set of buttons) can represent other things (people in the class). It also is the foundation for understanding the concept that a number like 25 can consistently represent a quantity. This concept is essential in understanding our number system.

Source: Investigations in Number, Data, and Space: Counting Ourselves and Others. Dale Seymour, 1998. (Pages 14 and 15)

Mathematics Game—Collect 10

Materials

Dice—cover numbers 4, 5, 6 with tape and change number of dots to 1, 2, 3

Counters (buttons, pennies, beans)

Playing the Game

1. Players take turns rolling the number cube and collecting the amount of counters shown on the dice. (Note: cube should have two sides with 1, two sides with 2, and two sides with 3.)



2. The player reaching ten counters first wins.



3. The game can be made more challenging by working to a higher number. Players can also be told they must reach 10 exactly.