How Do You Help Students Who Struggle with Number Sense?

While working closely with students in intervention groups in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades the obvious has dawned on me.  Students struggle with their understanding of many number concepts such as adding, subtracting, and rounding simply because they cannot count forwards and/or  backwards from any number.  Their understanding of patterns to count eludes them.  Maybe implementing the new common core standards helped me to see this more clearly.  Having your students simply count orally or  write their numbers as a daily activity starting at any random number, will help strengthen their number “common sense” as I like to call it.  Looking at number charts and identifying patterns as a matter of daily practice will aide in strengthening their number sense.

To build a solid foundation with students in grades K-2 and to intervene on behalf of some students in grades 3-5, I made a variety of number charts and puzzles for the purpose of helping students become strong with their sense of number.  Several of these charts begin ten numbers before a multiple of 100, and continue counting 10 numbers after a multiple of 100 is reached.  This is in order that students are able to practice identifying what numbers come before multiples of 100 which I have especially noticed my intervention groups struggle with.  My plan is to make the charts go to 1000, however it was taking me so long to build the number puzzles that I decided to complete charts and puzzles in sections. This first group goes to 310.  They are for sale on TPT now.  I am posting some examples of the charts and puzzles below.  Just click on them if you are interested in purchasing them.