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Topic A Count and Compare with Data
Topic A gives students a chance to extend their kindergarten counting and comparing skills within real-life data contexts. These lessons provide opportunities for students to mathematize their world.
Students collect data by sorting sets, making choices, and tracking observations. They represent their data by using cubes, colored number paths, symbols, and tally marks. Students come to see that each piece of data can be represented by an object or mark. They also have opportunities to express which representations are most helpful to collect, represent, and interpret data.
As students interpret data, they see that organizing helps them find totals and compare categories. Students ask and answer questions such as How many animals are in the park? or Do more children ride the bus or walk to school? To answer, they may compare data by noticing that one category is longer than another or that there are “extras.” They may also compare numerically by noticing which total is greater.
At first, students use everyday words to share what they notice about the totals, and then they transition to more formal comparison terms. Finally, they connect the terms to the comparative symbols >, <, and =. Students write numbers to complete number sentence frames that use these symbols.
Students will progress from counting all to counting on to add in topic A and topic B. Representations such as the number path and tally marks, which use 5-groups, support the transition throughout topic A.
Comparison concepts are revisited later in module 1 as students explore equality; in module 2 when students find how many more; and in module 5 when students use place value reasoning.
Please note that lessons 1, 3, and 5 include sets of objects that students count. They require advance preparation, as described in the materials section of each lesson.
