Read-Alouds to Support the Counting Stages and a Google Slides Freebie!
Read-Alouds to Support the Counting Stages and a Google Slides Freebie!
Do you use counting read-alouds to support your students as they are developing counting skills? Marilyn Burns (2015) says that “Children’s books can spark students’ imaginations in ways that exercises in textbooks or workbooks often don’t. Connecting math to literature can boost confidence for children who love books but are wary of math. And students who already love math can learn to appreciate stories in a whole new way.”Keep reading for some great counting read-aloud books to share with your students.
Counting to Answer “How Many?”
Doug Clements’ and Julie Sarama’s (2017/2019) learning trajectories work shows that around four to five years of age, children develop the ability to count five to ten objects and answer “how many?”
One Gorilla by Anthony Browne is a simple counting book that counts a different type of primate from 1 to 10. Its large numbers and simple pictures make it a perfect book for counting along.
Follow along as embellished ingredients are added to create a salad in 1 Big Salad: A Delicious Counting Book by Juana Medina.
Who doesn’t love pop-up books?! How Many Bugs in a Box? by David A. Carter is a fun counting book that combines two kid favorites- pop-ups and bugs.
Get lots of practice and fun counting everything but monkeys in Count the Monkeys by Mac Barnett and Kevin Cornell.
Ordinal Numbers
While Clements and Sarama (2017/2019) include ordinal numbers in the comparing and ordering numbers trajectory, I am adding Eric Carle’s 10 Little Rubber Ducks to this list of counting books. Here we see what happens when ten rubber ducks get lost at sea. From the first to the tenth, each has their own journey.
Read-Alouds for Counting Backward
By six, children can count backward from ten. Also around this time, children are developing the ability to count on from numbers other than one, knowing immediately the number that is one more. Their gained familiarity with the count sequence also allows them to immediately know the number just before any given number.
Clever mice outsmart a greedy snake in Ellen Stoll Walsh’s Mouse Count, embedding counting to ten and back.
Count backward On the Launch Pad in the book by Michael Dahl. This book counts down from twelve.
In Ten Little Ninjas Miranda Paul follows a familiar story path as she puts ten children to bed one by one.
Read-Alouds to Practice Skip-Counting
As children secure their knowledge of whole number counting to 100 and beyond, around age six to seven, they are developing skip-counting skills.
Two Ways to Count to Ten: A Liberian Folktale Retold by Ruby Dee is one of my favorite stories about the benefit of skip-counting. Watch as the antelope shows that physical strength isn’t always the best way to win a contest.
One is a Snail, Ten is a Crab by April Pulley Sayre and Jeff Sayre explores ways to make numbers with different combinations of animal feet, for example five is a dog and a snail. It goes on to count by tens. An extension activity might be skip-counting by other numbers shown in the story.
Making Books
There’s no shortage of lists of counting read-alouds on the internet, but hopefully, this one will remind you of a few classics you may have forgotten and introduce you to a few new favorites.
After reading counting books to your students let them make their own! They can staple paper together, number each page and draw matching representations for each number. Students can write the number, such as six, or I have six ____. You can provide sentence stems or have them pre-printed for students who need them.
You can also grab this Google Slides book freebie. Students will use their device’s camera to insert pictures that represent each quantity from one through ten. Images could also be inserted from Google Drive if a camera is not available. Finally, they will type the name of the item to complete the sentence on each page.
Clements, D. H., & Sarama, J.(2017/2019). Learning and teaching with learning trajectories [LT]2.
Retrieved from Marsico Institute, Morgridge College of Education, University of Denver.
Burns, Marilyn. About Teaching Mathematics : A K-8 Resource. Math Solutions, 2015.
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