Choral Counting

is an instructional activity that supports students in learning the language of counting as well as explicitly connecting these words to the number sequence and its symbolic written form. Students examine number relationships to identify, to discuss, and to use patterns and the structure of the number system. It's also an opportunity for joyous community building and peer to peer interactions in math!

The steps of the activity are as follows. Teachers modify and adjust as they tailor the activity to their students' mathematical development.

Choose a counting sequence
Introduce counting task to students
Start the counting sequence together and annotate the numbers
After first 4 or 5 counts - check in
Continue to count together
Draw count to a close and discuss the patterns
Close the task

This detailed Choral Counting Protocol from TED elaborates on each of the outlined steps.

Math Learning Center's Number Chart Web App which let's you customize a number chart, https://www.mathlearningcenter.org/apps/number-chart.

Counting Development

Children develop and explore these 3 aspects of number at different times.

Quantity is the number of objects. Children can explore quantity before they learn to count. For example identifying which bowl is bigger or which pile of books has more.
Verbal is the counting sequence. You can think of it like the "ABC song". Students may start out by saying the words for numbers out of sequence, saying multiple numbers as they touch a single object, and not understanding that they relate to a specific quantity. They then move on to forward and backward counting sequences through repeat practice opportunities. These sequences support their development of addition and subtraction.
Symbolic is how to read and write numbers. You can think of reading and writing 1-10 as similar to learning the alphabet.

Two more important counting concepts are:

One-to-one correspondence: touching one object and saying one number name.
Cardinality: the final number said when counting a group of objects ie: the total.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics NCTM

Video: The Progression of Early Number and Counting by Graham Fletcher

Choral Counting Routines and Task Ideas

An essential component of Choral Counting is preplanning your number sequence for a specific objective. Consider where to start and where you want your sequence to end. Through your sequence you may want to call attention to the teens numbers, patterns for base ten, skip counting, connections to multiplication, etc.

Preplanning template from TED to identify your sequence, write it out in advance, and prepare pauses and facilitation questions.
Questions to elicit students' ideas in a Choral Counting activity
K-2 Choral Counting Tasks from the CC book.
A list of 16 different TK-5 Choral Counting task ideas with sample recordings from TED. Very useful to help get started!
Choral Counting tasks K-5 from Berkeley Everett of UCLA.
Choral Counting tasks in the Upper Grades to support mathematical ideas of base ten, +, -, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, etc.

Videos: Youtube Choral Counting playlist by Elham Kazemi, professor at U of W and author

Formative Tasks for Assessing Understanding

Eliciting student thinking gives us insight into their developing understanding of math. It allows us to see what they can do and make instructional decisions to build on that knowledge. Teacher questioning is one of the 6 high leverage pedagogical practices and directly supports student development of the Math Practices K-12. We can also elicit their thinking through various tasks related to counting.

This set of Counting Tasks from DREME starts with counting aloud and moves to more complex tasks such as one to one correspondence and number conservation.

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