Counting by Tens: Hands

Today I’m going to show you how I would teach counting by tens, to the students in my classroom. To begin with, I would have three students come to the front of the room, with their fingers extended. So, the entire class can see. Student one, student number two, and student number three. I would say class we are going to count their fingers. We’re going to count together ready count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30. That’s right boys and girls, there are 30 fingers in the front of this room. But boy that took us a long time to count, is there any quicker way to count these fingers? Well, by now they’re probably going to say counting by fives. I’d say, Oh, boys and girls you are so smart let’s count by 5. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. Oh, my goodness boys and girls that’s right there are 30 fingers. Is there another way we can do it any quicker? Hmm, what can we do? And, if no one comes up with counting by tens, I would give them the idea that, oh my goodness we can count by tens. Let’s try that, both hands together our ten. So, we’re going to say ten. Okay you ready, count with me, 10, 20, 30. Wasn’t that much quicker. We did such a nice job. Boys and girls, how many fingers do you see? Thirty, you are correct. Now, I’m going to bring some more students to the front of the room with us. Here’s student number four, student number five, and student number six. We would go through the process again, and we would count all their fingers one by one. Boys and girls count with me, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, all the way over here to 56, 57, 58, 59, 60. Oh, my goodness that took us a long time. What can we do? Well they will say now counting by five, so we’ll count them by 5. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60. Beautiful job. Can we do it quicker? Hopefully they will now come up with counting by tens. So, we’re going to count the entire set of hands, all fingers, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60. Boy, that was a lot quicker, and we got our jobs done faster. Nice job.