Principles of Rational Counting: Numbers 1-15

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Principles of Rational Counting: Numbers 1-15 Assuming students already understand the concept of counting rationally to 10, counting rationally to 15 is the next step. To do this there are several principles of counting which are pertinent to be understood by the student: one-to-one correspondence, stable order principle, and cardinality rule. One-to-one correspondence, means that the student understand that each item being counted represents that one item only. In the beginning, it generally helps to label the items that are counted, removing them as each one is counted (Principles of Counting, n.d.). A good way of verifying a student’s understanding of this is to have the students count Skittles. The students will lay 15 Skittles down in a line. As the student counts each one, he will physically move the candy from the left (uncounted side) to the right (counted side) as they count each one out loud (One-to-One Correspondence and Counting Skills, 2006). If a student understands that each item represents one, they should then be able to understand that numbers stay in a consistent counting order – 1,2,3,4,5 is the concrete way of counting, never 1,2,3,4,9. This concept is called stable order principle (Principles of Counting, n.d.). This principle can be verified by listening to students count. If there is a problem, it can easily be corrected by listening to other count and practice (Clements & Sarama, 2004) . The third counting principle is the cardinality rule, the student comprehends that when counting items in a group, the last item number spoken is the amount or total number of the group (Principles of Counting, n.d.). To verify this principle, using the same skittles from the first principle, when the student counts the candies to 15, they then can explain that there are 15 skittles on the desk. If a student needs to recounts when asked

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