Teaching About Tens Using Agility Exercises

We have been using our time sprinting, hopping, etc to teach about addition by tens. This lesson incorporates measurement, addition and agility. First we do our warm ups and stretches. These include multiplication jumping jacks including counting by tens. We then line up the students in lines that are ten feet apart. We point out that the measurement they are standing on is 0 feet. We put out visual cues that consist of cones with 10 to 50 feet signs on them. When we give instructions to run we include the measurement in feet. Running across the width of the field today is 50 feet. We then asked our kids to locate where the 10 foot marker using the strategy of some many steps equals 10 feet. We then give instructions to jog 10 feet and run the other ___ feet. The kids have to figure out the rest of the distance. We then ask the students to identify where the 20, 30 and 40 foot distance. The next instructions include commands such as run backward 20 feet and then run forward ____ feet. The kids have to figure out what the distance is. We then asked the kids to figure out how far to go with the instruction of the starting point is also the finish point. We give them directions such as 100 feet, 80, 60 and 40 feet. We found that the kids had a firm grasp of saying their 10 times tables but it was hard for them to put it to use in a real world setting. We hope this will improve their number sense.