← My Learning🔢 Mathematics · Year 1Number Story Detectives: Counting to 120 and the Stories Numbers Tell
The Great Counting Collection: Bundles of Ten
🎯 Today's mission briefing
We are learning to count a really big collection by making groups of ten, counting the tens (ten, twenty, thirty...) and then the leftovers.
You'll know you've got it when:
- I can sort a big collection into groups of exactly ten
- I can count the groups in tens — ten, twenty, thirty — and then count on the leftover ones
- I can say and write the number I counted, getting the digits the right way around (fourteen is 14, not 41!)
The Impossible Jar
Connects to what your guest already knows and makes them curious. Activating prior knowledge is one of the strongest predictors of new learning.
Helper, read aloud: (Tip out a big pile — 40 to 60 pieces of dry pasta, buttons or pegs.) Look at this mountain! Last night I tried to count it one by one: 'one, two, three...' and by the time I got to about thirty I sneezed and LOST MY PLACE. I had to start again. Twice! There has to be a better way... and there is. Real mathematicians never count a big pile one by one. Today you learn their secret: the Bundle of Ten.