Early Childhood Education Commons^™

Dot Card Number Talks: Illustrating Counting Strategies With Preservice Elementary Teachers, Robert Knurek

Colorado Mathematics Teacher

A dot card number talk was implemented in a mathematics content course with preservice elementary teachers (PsETs) to highlight counting strategies that are commonly seen in elementary school mathematics. PsETs' sketches on the dot cards showcase many different strategies, such as counting-all, counting-on, matching, and subitizing. While their illustrations demonstrated these different strategies, their answers were ultimately the same. The dot card number talk sparked meaningful conversations and helped PsETs distinguish between the counting strategies.