It has been a long time since my last post. I left the classroom last June. I walked out and didn’t look back. It was an extremely difficult year. I became a K-5 math coach. I thought a change would be good. I have spent that last 7 months learning about the acquisition of numbers in elementary school. I have seen the development of number sense from kindergarten up. I have had the opportunity to teach everything from 1st grade to 5th grade. It has been an amazing experience and I have met some extremely dedicated teachers.
Unfortunately, I knew right away. As soon as September came and I didn’t have my own classes with my own students I knew I had made a mistake. I missed having my students to call my own. I tried to hold it in and give this new role time to sink in. It was new for me and it was new for the teachers I was working with. I knew there would be growing pains, but I never experienced the same joy that I had in my own classroom. I have really enjoyed changing how math is taught in so many classrooms, but I knew.
One of the most interesting things I have learned about number concepts in the lower grades, unitizing five and ten are the building blocks for addition and subtraction. Students should be held back from working with larger numbers until they are comfortable with the combinations to ten.
Being able to spend the year working on the development of number concepts K-5 has given me a new appreciation for mathematics. Everything is interconnected and when students are given the ability to make these connections we can watch them do amazing things.
Numbers 