Digi Blocks are Fun and Engaging!

It is Wednesday and almost Winter Break (7 more school days to be exact) but I wanted to begin chronicling our work with Digiblocks. I have found that in many of the classrooms, I work in, the understanding of base 10 and the ratio of 10 in our number system was a very difficult task. The students at this age level ( k-2) are still continuing to count one by one and also have a difficult time understanding re-grouping. I was on the web and I stumbled upon da da da DIGI BLOCKS. The Digiblocks are a great tool to help with this.!!!! I have tried using base ten blocks and other tools but students still had a difficult time understanding when to create a group of 10 ones and turn it into a 1 set of 10. The design of the Digiblocks creates a very concrete, interactive visual for students about the base 10 system. I am all about using what you got but this experiment with DIGIBLOCKs seems so far  like it is well worth the cost investment.

So, we began using Digiblocks today.  I wanted to make this a fun and engaging introductory lesson. I used a Counting Collections format.  Here is some information about Counting Collections, from Scholastic. It is based on the work of Megan Franke at UCLA lab school, she is a contributor to the theory behind CGI Cognitively Guided Instruction. I have had the awesome pleasure of hearing her speak every year for the last 4 years. She is mathtastic and this coming from someone who did not enjoy math until adulthood.  First, we divided into pairs, then I gave them almost no direction other then count your collections.  And this is what it looked like....

Here they are counting their Collections, We had started with some Number Routines using the 100's chart.

With little direction they were able to count the DigiBlock collection they were counting single digi- blocks (I used the words one, single, units to give depth to their math vocab.) their classroom teacher

( Mrs. Esh) was impressed with their engagement. I was too they were working together counting and counting and counting.  I did set a timer to give them a sense of urgency and it worked. Next, we had to step it up a bit. I had given them a little heads up during our Number Routines by having them count from various numbers for example: I asked them to start at 7 and stop and 52 counting by ones, My question was: How many sets of 10 can you create with this number set we counted? The students were able to circle sets of 10 but really what made this POP was when I showed them the 10 holder.  They were fascinated by these. I had them estimate how many holders they might need and then they began to fill the holders with 10 single digi-units. On the Digiblock website there is a video that shows if each holder does not have 10 the holder would not close to make 1 set of 10. I did not believe it but it is true, it will not lock unless it is a complete set of 10. LOVE THIS ! also their is a tiny embossed 5  inside the holder when it is filled with 5. WOW!! this will be cool and useful in future lessons. 

Here they are they made stacks of ten then put them in the holders to create a new value for 1, 1 set of 10 instead of 1 unit this the most difficult in the base 10 system for young mathematicians to comprehend changing the name of what they counted.  They were surprised at how easily they counted by 10's then the knew instinctively that they could not count the single digi blocks as 10's Not ONE PAIR COUNTED THE SINGLES BY 10's  WOO HOOO!!!! with base 10 blocks this does not happen kiddos usually continue to count the singles by 10's. For example: If they had 4 ten sticks and 3 ones they may count it, 10 -20 -30-40 -50 - 60-70.  Next week, they want me to take their 10 holders and but them into 100 holders to see how many sets of 100 they counted altogether as a class. We are going to open our lesson next week with this idea. I am also going to introduce our Math Notebooks where we are going to keep track of our Counting Collections, Digiblock work and other math work. Today was a good day for these young Mathematicians.

Here they are stacking sets of ten.

Now they have moved on to putting the singles in to 10 holders. NOT one group counting the singles as 10's they all knew to switch back to counting by 1's. LOVE IT. Way to Go MUSTANGS.

I thought this was a great connection. They used their 100 chart to organize their counting. These two boys said" YES, we came up with a cool strategy." when I walked over to take a picture of it. They were right!