What Do You Know About the Number?

Kindergarten Mathematics

Routines: What Do You Know About the Number?

In this routine, the teacher selects a number appropriate to the grade level curriculum and asks the students to tell something they know about the number. The teacher places the number in the center of the board or chart paper. As the students respond, the teacher records the students’ thinking in a web format, crediting students with their names as they go.

This is a great way to assess students' knowledge of number at the beginning of the year and as new standards are introduced throughout the year.

In kindergarten, teachers should begin the year with single digit numbers and gradually build up to larger numbers. Students in kindergarten write numbers to 20 and count to 100 by tens and ones. In first grade, teachers may want to begin the year with teen numbers and gradually build to larger numbers. Students in first grade work with numbers up to 120. Examples of responses may include the number in word form, equations, ten frames to build the number, pictures of sticks and dots, greater than, less than, or how many tens and ones are in the numbers.