What happened before the lesson?

Where did the idea come from? 

• “Animal Watering Hole”, page 127–130 in The Young Child and Mathematics.

What had the children learned BEFORE this lesson? 
Children had basic number concepts and knew how to count 1 to 15.

What did you plan to do AFTER this lesson?
This is a game that should be played many times. Children’s guesses get better each time they play it. 
 

What's happening during the lesson?

Objective: Children will guess the total number of water drinks the different animals will get within a minute time period.

Introduction: Show the The Water Hole and talk about the pictures.

Procedure:

1. Distribute the puppets (or make animal assignments). Talk about pretending and tell children that they must pretend to be the animal and move the way the animal moves back and forth to the water hole to get a drink.
2. Explain that they must also pretend that the unifix cubes in the bucket are the drinks of water in the water hole. 
3. Explain the game rules:  As each group of  animals move back and forth,  they will get one cube (representing one drink of water) and then take it back to the other side. They will leave it there and then return to the water hole repeating the process as many times as they can during the time period. 
4. Before the game begins, the children on the sidelines must guess the total number of drinks they think the animals will get in the time period. They show this guess with unfix cubes stacked on top of one another. 
5. After the animals get their drinks of water, the actual number of water drinks is compared to children’s guesses by comparing the towers made. 
6. Conversations about good guesses and better guesses are conducted. 
   

What will I do after the lesson?

What would you do differently if you taught it again?
I would give children more opportunities to see how particular animals moved. For some of the animals, children didn’t have enough information to make a good guess. 

How would you describe the teaching that occurred using the words on the Continuum of Teaching Behaviors? 
I used an indirect approach and MODELED the activity by my actions only using cues and prompts.