Whenever you’re counting forwards, always count backwards because you know that if they struggle with number relationships, number order. It’s really important to have that flexibility of forward and backwards of more and less.
~ Zeba from Episode 69 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast
Episode Summary
In this episode, I discuss essential number relationships and effective strategies for kindergarten teachers to support young learners in math. I explain the importance of number order, introduce engaging activities like the movement-based game “Pop,” and explore the use of tangible objects for understanding more and less. I also outline a structured progression for teaching number relationships and highlight resources, including the game Nearby Numbers and additional engaging videos.
In this episode, I share:
- Understanding Counting Forward and Backward
- Progression of One More and One Less
- Supporting Kids with Number Lines
- Engaging Games and Activities
Previous Episodes:
- Link to episode 66
Resources Mentioned:
- One More One Less Number Order & Differentiated 1-10, 10-20, 21-100
- Missing Numbers Worksheets | Differentiated Number Order Activity Board
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Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hey, teacher friends, welcome back. We are diving back into our math series, and I’m focusing today on number relationships. So supporting kids with understanding the number relationships, number order, one more, one less, all of that. We’re going to get into all of that. All right, let’s dive in.
[0:21] Music. You’re listening to the kindergarten cafe podcast where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away i’m Zeba creator and founder of kindergarten cafe and i help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started.
[1:14] Okay, number relationships, number relations, such an important foundational skill as we talked about understanding that number order for kids. And before we move on to addition, subtraction, place value, number decomposition, we need to make sure that kids have a strong understanding of the order of the numbers. One really easy way to work on this is anytime you are counting forwards, you should also be counting backwards. And that counting backwards, I think, can easily get forgotten and lost. So if you’re counting the number of just anything, anytime you’re counting, also count backwards and get the kids in that habit too. If you’re doing a movement break where you’re counting 10 jumping jacks, count forward to 10 and then count backwards from 10. Pop is a really fun game for morning meeting or like a movement break or math closing activity. But Basically, the kids stand in a circle and you are counting up to a certain number or counting down to a certain number. And that can be really tricky for kids. The counting backwards is the trickiest part. So let’s say we’re counting up to 20. The kids, each kid says the next number in order. So one and the next kid says two. Then the next kid says three. But the person who gets to 20, that is your pop number. They say pop and they jump down. And for some reason for kids, because they get to say pop and jump down, they’re not really disappointed that they quote unquote lost.
[2:42] And so then you keep going around the circle, but the circle is getting smaller. And so each time a kid says 20, they pop down until you get to the final two and then you see who won. But really, anytime that you’re counting, especially if you’re working with kids like in small groups and you’re having them count objects or put their maybe, well, I’ll get to this in a second, but one of the strategies for working on number order is having them put out number cards in order from one to whatever they’re working on, one to 10 to start, one to 20, then you can have them jump and count each number. If they’re big numbers, like big number cards, or you can have them, you know, tap and count.
[3:21] But then whenever you’re counting forwards, always count backwards. Because you know that if they struggle with number relationships, relationships number order it’s really important to have that flexibility of forward and backwards of more and less so speaking of more and less when we’re introducing the concept of more and less we want to really start with counting actual objects and then adding like okay what would be one more if i added one more to the pile okay what if i added taking away one what would be one less and like do it with the physical objects before you move to the abstract of like if i had 10 and I added one more, what would that be? Because that’s really hard for kids.
[4:01] They need to start with the actual objects in front of them. And if they don’t know, the kids often start counting from zero again. Like if they’re not solid with their number order and understanding the number of relationships, and you have a group of 10 and you add one more and you say, okay, how many is there now in the group?
[4:21] They’re going to start counting the whole thing again. And it’s a good strategy but it’s not what we want it’s not efficient it shows they’re not solid in that number order concept and so we want to get kids to move away from counting from zero to counting on from a closer number so it’d be like okay well if you know there’s 10 let’s start with like 10 and then count the next number 10 oh 11 or even like okay so if you are doing the abstract, like, oh, so what if I had 10 and I added one more and the kid’s not sure?
[4:56] Then they start going one, two. Okay, well, what about if we start from eight? Nine, ten, eleven. They just need that forward motion sometimes to like get to the number that they’re not sure about. But that’s a better strategy. It’s more efficient for especially when you get to the higher numbers and they’re not sure what number comes next. They can’t start from one. That would take forever. So you want to move them from concrete objects of counting to more abstract of like, well, what if I had ten and I added one more? And then you want to help move them from counting back from one if they don’t know or counting all the objects to just counting the next number or counting from a much closer number. This works for one less as well. If they don’t know one less than 10, if you say, well, what if I had 10 and I take away one or what is one less than 10? However you want to say it. If they don’t know, they might start from one going one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Oh, nine was the number before 10. So it’s nine. And that obviously is not efficient. It’s going to take them a while when you get to higher numbers. And so we want to get them to start doing the counting backwards.
[6:01] Or if that’s tricky, then at least counting from a closer number. So what’s a number that’s closer to 10? Okay, eight. So eight, nine, 10. Oh, it’s nine. Nine is one less than 10. Those are the goals where we want to get them. And eventually we want to get them to just knowing in a snap, If you say 10 and what’s one less than 10, the child knows it’s 9.
[6:22] That’s the ultimate goal, but those are strategies to help them get to that ultimate goal. When we are working with one more and one less and we’re thinking about the progression of supporting our students, we want to start with 0 to 10 at first and make sure they have a solid foundation in knowing one more and one less of those numbers. It’s much easier to do all those counting on strategies and counting backwards strategies you’re better able to give them the concrete objects for them to practice with and so once they have a solid foundation of one more one less within 10 then the next transition would be to work on the number relationships and one more one less for numbers to 20. Now as we talked about in the foundational skills episode, I would not do abstract what’s one more than 13 unless I knew the student had a solid foundation in counting up to 20. Because if they have a solid foundation in counting objects up to 20, they know the number order.
[7:25] They’re able to say the rote counting and the rote number order up to 20. So that will help them if they’re struggling with knowing in a snap what’s one more than 13 or what’s one less than 13 without the objects. And then after they’ve mastered one more, one less up to 20, then you can start doing numbers up to 100 because at that point there’s sort of a pattern to it. And it’s really just those decade switches that is the key to focus on when you’re working on those higher numbers. Kids know at that point, they know that one less than 42 is 41 because they know that after the two comes, or before the two comes the one in any decade.
[8:07] What’s tricky for them is knowing what’s one less than 40 or what’s one more than 39, switching between those decades. And they might not fully get there by the end of kindergarten knowing if you say, if I have 90 what’s what’s one less than 90 they might not get their in here and that’s okay that’s something they’re going to continue working on in first grade when they do more work with numbers up to 100 but it is something that you can progress on if kids are ready for it you can work on that so how do we support kids when working on these different areas zero to 10 10 to 20 20 100 I love to have number lines when kids are working with one more one less specifically with zero to 10 or 10 to 20. If you’re working on the hundreds, you know, it was 20 to 100, you could have a hundreds chart, but make sure you introduce that. It’s not a tool. I use too much in kindergarten, but I used all the time in first grade and second grade. But having that number line available for zero to 20 is so important. And you show them how they’re going to find the number that you’re asking them about, and they’re going to see what came before, what came after. And again, this is after a solid foundation of counting that many, because we want them to have a basic understanding of the concrete before we move to the abstract of, if I have 12, what’s one more?
[9:28] Otherwise, it’s going to be very confusing if you just show them the number line and say, well, what’s the next number? That’s going to be more memorizing instead of understanding that 13 is the next number. And they know that because they’ve counted so many times up to 13, they always count 12 and and then 13.
[9:45] So once they have that solid foundation and counting, absolutely use the number lines to support kids in working with one more and one less. These are tools that can help support their development understanding. This shouldn’t be crutches to depend on, right? We want to make sure that kids practice without them as well. Or as we see them getting better and better, we take away these tools so they can have practice without them, but also show them where they can find them in the classroom. So if they get to a problem, they just don’t know, they know they can go find the tool when they need it. If you’re looking for more support, I have a really fun game called Nearby Numbers, where it’s available in my teacher by teacher store. So I’ll put the link below. And it’s in the same grouping of 0 to 10, 10 to 20 and 20 to 100, where the kids have a number in the middle. And then they have to basically build their own number line. So building your own number line, as we talked about with the movements and counting forwards and backwards, such a great way to practice number order and number relations. So this is just doing that, but like a lot of times over.
[10:52] So they’ll do it once for the number in the middle being like 10. And they have two numbers on either side. So they have to fill in the numbers that are less and the numbers that are more. And they have little cards that they just put in place. It’s really fun. And I like that you only have to teach the activity once. and then as kids get better with 0 to 10 then you can introduce 10 to 20 with the exact same game
[11:13] just a different board and then 20 to 100. I also have a whole packet on one more one less games and activities for you to play and so if kids are really struggling and again this is broken up into 0 to 10 10 to 20 and 20 to 100 if kids are struggling I can pull out the 10 to 20 one more one less games, pull them for a small group and just practice it over and over and over again.
[11:38] So all these are available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and on my website. So I’ll have the links below. And just a couple of fun like videos for you to try. Harry Kindergarten and Jack Hartman have some really fun videos that focus on one more and one less. And there Jack Hartman’s always fun to have the kids move and be practicing what they’re learning. So those would be really good. You know, if you’re setting up the math centers, you need something for the kids to do, put that on. It’s educational and entertaining. Win-win.
[12:10] So when teaching one more, one less, number relationships, all of that, we need to remember that the kids need to have a strong foundation in counting, that we want to work in bands of progression, so work in the 0 to 10 band, 10 to 20, and then 20 to 100, and that kids need that lots of repeated practice with that for counting forwards and backwards, and we want to move from the concrete of counting actual objects and doing one more, one less with the actual objects before switching to the abstract of just, if I had 12 and I added one more, what would that be? They need to have lots of practice with that concrete counting before we move to the abstract. So thanks so much for listening. And our quote of the day is, you know, I said to the class, okay, kids, one minute left. And the kid said, is that less than five minutes?
[13:02] So showing you know one is less than five they didn’t quite have that understanding, uh i may have done this quote of the day before i’m not sure but it was so good i had to do it twice if i did it twice anyway but such a good one kids don’t understand that number order always or the concept of time so anyway thanks so much for listening and if you liked this episode and
[13:26] you’re excited for more math support. We’ve got a couple more episodes for you coming up on math fluency and math centers. So stay tuned for those. Send me a DM on Instagram. You can use the code word math again and let me know that you’re excited about these episodes. And share with a friend who also wants help teaching math with their students. Thanks so much.
[13:48] Music. Thanks so much for listening to the kindergarten cafe podcast be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies if you liked this episode the best ways to show your support are to subscribe leave a review or send it to a friend i’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips see you then Thank you.