Critique of Kelly Jacobs' Blog

Kelly found a resource that gave her ideas on how to teach first graders how to count whole numbers up to 100.  The purpose of the activity was for students to look for patterns while counting, reading, and writing whole numbers to 100.  The lesson required students to add blocks and keep track of their place value, regrouping when necessary.  Kelly made note of a website, illuminations.nctm.org that virtually allowed students to add the blocks on the computer.  The technology incorporated into this lesson helped make it more efficient, effective, and enhanced.  Kelly argued that by doing this activity online, the teacher was saved from a mess, while the students remained more focused with technology being incorporated.

Critique of Kelly's blog: I really liked her idea and concepts illustrated on how she was going to teach first graders to grasp the concept of counting whole numbers to 100.  The website she listed, illuminations.nctm.org seemed to have a lot of neat, helpful activities; however, I was not able to find the activity she planned on using for this lesson.  I think it could have been more useful if she would have provided to actual link to the activity.  I still think this is a great idea in order to teach young children how to count and the concepts of regrouping.  I think this activity would work best if the teacher demonstrated it first, then decided to let the kids play around with it by themselves, allowing them to be familiar with the program before they are face with it alone.