Monday, 8 July 2013

NAIDOC Week



Let’s take a moment to recognise Naidoc week and celebrate with an Australian counting book.
An Australian 1, 2, 3 of Animals by Bronwyn Bancroft (a descendant of the Bundjalung people of New South Wales) is one of my favourite books for introducing doubles and near doubles. It is illustrated using aboriginal-style designs and stands in its own right as a beautiful picture book. As a counting book it is also very clever, creating double page spreads of very clear double and near double designs. Every double-page spread has either a double or a near double associated with it as shown on the double page spread for eleven.


This makes it an ideal inspiration for students to create their own similar double page spreads for any number of their choosing, emphasizing doubles and near doubles.
Unlike many other counting books this one does not stop at ten, it goes to 15 providing opportunities for exploring some of those teen numbers that prove to be so difficult for students to understand. Teen numbers have been very much at the forefront of our thinking lately. Many students need more time to explore how numbers between 10 and 20 work and to partition them in many different ways. With this in mind we have a new eBook package available at our website - and it also features the number eleven.


An Australian 1, 2, 3 of Animals is published by Little Hare Books and is available from the iTunes store in a format that you can share with your class on your iPad.

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