How Many?

A simple question and a pretty easy one to answer really. Last week we tried teaching it to the youngest class, but they didn’t get it. Continuing on from the mind map we had worked on with the older kids last week, I decided to try ‘how many’ with these guys.

The car and the mind map was still on the board. So I moved on to the wheels. “How many wheels?” “Wheels?” “How many wheels does the car have?” Blank looks. That’s fine. Lets see that they know what wheels are first.

A bit more ini-mini and “Stand up!” I point at the board, he walks up to it. “Wheels.” He looks at the board and points at the world wheels. “Good… where?” He looks at the board again, blankly. I think he thinks he got it wrong. So I go up, point at the word wheels and say “Yes!” With a big smile on my face. Then I do a sweeping point at the picture. Suddenly he gets it. He points at the wheels. “Yes! Sit down.”

So let’s keep trying. How many. I’m trying to think how I can do this. “One wheel?” I get blank look. “Two wheels?” Blank looks. “Three wheels?” I keep looking and pointing at the board. I’m looking around, trying to see if any of them think they might be getting it. Then we get a look from one of the boys. I walk up to him and say “How many wheels?” He grins… “Two wheels?”
“… four wheels?”
“YES! Well done!!”

I write it on the board, the question; ‘How many wheels does a car have?’ and the answer; ‘The car has seven wheels.’ Some repeating of this so they know how to ask and answer the question. So, do they all understand it?

Ini-mini time. “Stand up. What’s this?” I ask, tapping the desk.
“Desk?”
“Yes! Okay. How many desks?” She looks around the room, she doesn’t understand. Others do and are already counting away. They ‘whisper-shouted’ the answer to her once they had counted them up. It was sweet. I had her sit down and picked someone else. We repeat this exercise until everyone of the kids has had something to count, and the last person up is the girl who didn’t understand at the beginning.

Some of them really got it straight away, and some didn’t. So we will revisit this later on.