Counting Counters
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Approach: Station Level: Year 4 and year 8
Focus: Constructing a table
Resources: Bag of counters (8 large: 3 red, 3 blue, 2 yellow; 6 small: 2 red,
1 blue, 3 yellow), ruler
360Kb
Questions/instructions:

Here is a bag of red, blue and yellow counters. Some of them are big and some are small.

Draw a table that shows how many of each colour are big and how many of each colour are small.
 
% responses
y4
y8
       
 
Big
Small
Red
3
2
Blue
3
1
Yellow
2
3
table format used
(6 cells, in 3 by 2 arrangement)
15 (12)
35 (29)
Labelled rows/columns for:
big and small
22 (16)
39 (36)
red, blue and yellow
28 (15)
43 (38)
Six numbers, all correct, formatted as:
digits
25 (20)
38 (23)
tallies or dots
8 (5)
21 (18)

Total score:
5
8 (5)
18 (16)
4
4 (4)
11 (8)
3
8 (7)
12 (6)
2
13 (9)
16 (11)
0–1
66 (75)
43 (58)
Subgroup Analysis [Click on charts to enlarge] :
Year 4
Year 8
Commentary:
Children at both year 4 and year 8 had difficulty with this task, although there was considerable growth from year 4 to year 8. Many recorded the information but not in an efficient table. There was a little improvement from 2003 to 2007 at year 8 level. Pakeha and Mäori students performed comparably, with Pasifika students a little lower, on average.