Challenge 1

Challenge 1: What do you think first grade students can do related to numbers, number relationships, and addition and subtraction with sums less than 20 coming into 1st Grade?

I think students coming into first grade should be able to count to twenty and should be able to understand that 2 is more than 1, 3 is more than 2, etc. They should be able to put cards with a different number of objects in order, meaning if they were given three cards, the first with one picture of a bear, the second with two pictures of bears, and the third with three, they should be able to determine which one has the most bears and which one has the least. They should be able to tell how many more bears are on the card with three than on the card with two by doing simple subtraction.

Students coming into first grade should understand addition in the way that if you ask them how many pets they have if they have one cat and one dog, they should be able to say "two." They should be able to do the same with subtraction. They should also be able to recognize what the numbers one through twenty represent and what they look like, and understand that the symbols represent a number.