Teaching Changing Numbers to First Grade

This semester, I have been working with a first grade class in Math. I worked with three students on the concept of changing numbers. Changing numbers is being able to take one number and compose or decompose it into another number. Students need to learn how to add on or take away from a number to create a new number.  I created an activity that helped my students see the changes they were making to the number as they were adding on or taking away.

The first activity that I created is "Car Control". In this activity, the students are given a strip of paper that looks like a road. I place unifex cubes in the top lane of the road and a card with a number on it underneath the road. The number on the card indicates the number of cars there should be on the road. The students must identify how many unifex cubes or "cars" are in the top lane of their road. If the number of cars on the top lane is less than the number on the card, the student must add cars onto the bottom lane of their road. If the top lane has more cars than the number displayed on the card, the student must take away cars from the top lane and park them on the number card. After completing the roads, I have the students choose a road that they liked the best and explain what they had to do to change the first number to the second.

The students loved working with the roads. Being able to see what number they added on or took away helped them see the numbers as groups and a whole while adding and subtracting. This activity can be changed to match any theme. I eventually created an activity similar to this one, but instead of a road, we used an ocean and instead of cars, we used fish. This activity can be modified to meet students' needs with the use of a number line or a hundreds chart to add an extra visual for the students to utilize.