IN THE CLASSROOM -- A sweet lesson in numbers

Deirdre Newman

Halloween came early for a group of kindergartners at Sonora

Elementary School in Costa Mesa on Thursday.

Students in Kelly Dever’s class used Halloween candy for an activity

on number sense and, as a reward for a job well done, got to eat the

candy afterward.

The lesson was designed to emphasize counting, comparing and

one-to-one correspondence.

Dever started the activity by passing out bags of marshmallow candies

and going over the colors and shapes of the objects, including yellow

moons, black bats, white ghosts and orange pumpkins.

“What shape are the moons?� Dever asked. “They’re crescent -- that’s

one of our hardest words.�

Then the students separated their candies into different groups and

counted how many of each they had on a work sheet. Next, they used

crayons to make color graphs representing each group.

Working with tangible objects helps the students understand one-to-one

correspondence, Dever said.

“I can talk until I’m blue in the face, but they have to see and touch

an object, even if it is just a marshmallow,� Dever said.

The intimate nature of the lesson -- Dever worked with four to five

students at a time -- was also beneficial for the second-language

learners in her class.

“In these small groups, they talk to each other, which is better than

just listening to me all day,� Dever said.

Destiny Miles was one of the first ones finished in her group. She

said the activity was fun because “it helps you learn things.�

The graphing activity is the first part of the lesson and a subsequent

activity will focus on comparing and contrasting the candy amounts, Dever

said.

* IN THE CLASSROOM is a weekly feature in which Daily Pilot education

writer Deirdre Newman visits a campus within the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District and writes about her experience.