Rekenreks--Ideas for use

The rekenrek is showing up more and more in our classrooms.  Hurrah!  They are great tools for us to use to help our students build number sense.  It is also a nice concrete way for students to model what they are thinking.

Christina Tondevold is an educator who provides great professional development for teachers.  She calls herself the Recovering Traditionalist and often discusses her transformation as a math educator.  She recently did a vlog post about her top 5 ways to use the rekenrek.  You can find it here.  It is only about 12 minutes and totally worth your while.

Here are her Top Five Ways to Use the Rekenrek:

5.  PLAY--Just let the students play and discover on the rekenrek independently.

4.  NUMBER STRINGS--Build student understanding through number strings talks.

3.  QUICK LOOKS--Grow students' subitizing skills through quick looks on the rekenrek and discussion afterwards.

2.  SHOW ME--Giving the students prompts and seeing the different ways that they "show me eight."

1.  MODELING STORY PROBLEMS--Having students use this concrete tool to help them make sense of story problems they encounter.

I have shared with many of you an online version that works well on the SMARTBoard.   Here is a link to that site.  You might even want to make it a tab in Chrome so that it is always handy!

It is a good idea to try to build in times when students take their concrete representation on the rekenrek and make it pictorial.  You can find many examples of rekenrek recording sheets online.  Beware, however!  This is much more difficult for young students to do than expected, but a great way to build their understanding.

Finally--I'll end with another great video about the rekenrek by Graham Fletcher.




Let me know if I can help in any way!