Rooster's Off to See the World

In math, we read an Eric Carle book called Rooster's Off to See the World. In this book, rooster sets off and has an increasing pattern of animals join him on his walk. First, two cats, them three frogs, four turtles, and then five fish come along. Students had to figure out how many animals there were all together, and also how to document their solution process.

We came up with a variety of strategies. Some students drew marks to represent each animal, then counted the total number of marks.

Some students added the numbers in the pattern together: 1+2=3, 3+3=6, 6+4=10, and 10+5=15.

Some students used their fingers to keep track of the growing numbers of animals.

One student drew the same visual pattern that Eric Carle put into each of his pages.

In each case, students made sense of a tricky problem and worked hard to solve it. This is one of the mathematical processes that students will use to understand and work with math throughout the year.