10 Black Dots

What?

We read the story “Ten Black Dots” by Donald Crews. The students then made their own dot book.  The students were asked to arrange dots into a picture.  The students each made a book. We then worked together to make a class book. The students picked their favourite page and we compiled them into a class book.  I scanned the pages into a movie file and recorded each student reading their page.

Why?

We have been working on subitizing in math class.  We have been looking at how dots and objects can be arranged into familiar formations.  The students are working on recognizing arrangments with automaticity.  This activity allows students to show the way they like to arrange numbers 1-10.  There is also a lot of cross-curricular applications.  Students wrote a sentence for each page, orally presented their work to the class, and drew creative illustrations.

Materials

• Coloured pencils
• Black dots (hole-punched black paper)
• Glue
• Black Dot template