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November 21, 2017
Counting Collections
Counting collections is a great activity for students to practice and develop efficient strategies for counting larger quantities of items. When introducing the activity, invite students to discuss how they can count objects (by 1s, 2s, making groups of 5s or 10s). As students count in pairs, inquire about their strategies for counting, keeping track, determining the total, and checking. To close, allow students to share their strategies and anything they noticed when counting. This is also a great time to highlight more efficient strategies for counting, recording, or keeping track of counts.
This student is grouping rows of 5 into groups of 10, and then combining them into groups of 20.
Download this article for more information about the Counting Collections activity.
Check out this video from the Teaching Channel of Counting Collections in action in a 3rd grade classroom.
Action Item
Create a variety of collections by organizing classroom items in bags or bins (pattern blocks, color tiles, bottle caps, buttons, paper clips, beads, ...you name it!) Collections can be uniform or mixed, but keep in mind that items that vary in color and size can be more challenging. You may also want to provide plastic cups, paper plates, or egg cartons to help students organize and keep track of their count. You can find recording sheets in the Counting Quantities section of the additive item bank (see CQ 18, CQ 17, or CQ 9) and an observation checklist for Counting Collections here.
This 2nd grade student is recording the groups of ten.
Did you know?
You can access the OGAP Item Banks online in two ways: find our new searchable OGAP item bank
here (
bookmark it!) or view the PDFs at www.ogapmath.com/item-bank.
