Can Your Students Count past 1000?

While working with students especially in intervention groups, I have found that they have difficulty passing a century number–both going forwards and backwards. Their counting is just fine when they, for example, count 695, 696, 697, 698, 699, (VERY LONG PAUSE).  At this point with some prompting students are finally able to figure out 700.  But this type of struggle occurs on a regular basis.  The struggle is even worse when you ask a student…  What comes before 700?  What is one less than 700? (Long silence accompanied by a blank stare)  Asking questions like these to fourth graders one would expect a quicker answer.  Could it be that when students make it to the 300’s chart we just expect that they have discovered all numeric patterns.  Somewhere amidst passing the students on to the next grade level someone forgot to mention that this is just the first few sets of numbers, and that numbers go on forever in a repeating pattern.  The second grade teacher thinks the third grade teacher will teach this.  The third grade teacher expects that they should “already know this” and so the baton is dropped,  and another student treads on a shaky foundational understanding of number.  Some students do make this mathematical connection without being explicitly told, however others do not, and need to be presented with a task and questioning that will help students discover the repeating patterns in number.

Because I  have seen no publishing companies extend number charts past 300, I developed these for my school.  These charts are extended to 1200, so that students can recognize the repeating patterns.  Most of the charts have a probing question at the bottom to help prompt discovery of patterns.  Most of the charts also start and end ten numbers before a multiple of 100 so that students are able to build understanding and find patterns before and after multiples of 100.  If you click on the link, you will be directed to TPT to get a few charts for free by clicking on the preview download!  There are over 70 pages of number charts included.