Using Twenty Frames

Last week students played a game utilizing "twenty frames," which is a mat that has twenty boxes on it. Students work together in pairs to roll a dice. Whatever number the dice lands on is how many colored tiles the student puts on the "twenty frame." Once they are done putting their colored tiles on the mat, they ask their partner to look at the "twenty frame" and decide how many tiles are still left without a tile. Students come up with multiple strategies for quickly recognizing how many tiles are left. Some students were able to recognize that the tiles were in rows of five. So if there were fourteen tiles filled in, a student may recognize that one row is still empty (and that would be five) and then one more from the previous row (and that would make six altogether). Once students rolled the dice, put the tiles on the "twenty frame" and asked their partner to count how many tiles were left, they switched turns and the pattern continued. The more students play this game, the more practice they get at discovering more efficient strategies.