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We know children are naturally fascinated by trains. Take advantage of this fun event in your classroom this month with a high-leverage math tool, Ten-Frames Trains. Make the concept of ten concrete for your learners with these fun, interlocking "train" cars that hold 10 counters per train. Connect trains together to work with numbers to 20 and beyond.
When I first started visiting elementary school classrooms, I noticed that almost all of them had a hundreds chart somewhere in the room. It might have been a pocket chart, or maybe a poster on the wall, but it was always there as an instructional tool. Then, about ten years ago, the mathematics community agreed that rather than stopping at 100, this chart should go to 120. This change would address students’ struggles with “turning the century,” helping them recognize that the number after 100 is 101 and that counting continues from there.
Helping students build an understanding of fraction concepts is a challenge in the intermediate and middle grades. The pictorial representation is a critical tool for making the connection between the concept and the procedure. Conceptual understanding occurs when students can explain why the procedure works, showing that they have assimilated or integrated this understanding into their basic knowledge of fractions.
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