Build the Number · NC.K.OA.1 · NC.K.CC.3

Six ways to be the same number

The standard does not ask a child to produce a ten frame, a tally and a numeral. It asks them to know those are the same thing wearing different clothes. That is a different task, and a board does it better than paper.

01What a child does

One number sits at the top of the panel, large enough for the whole room. Below it, six empty slots: ten frame, tally, domino, counters, word, numeral. In the tray are ten cards — the six right answers and four near misses, which are the same pictures holding a different number. So a child cannot match by shape. They have to read the quantity.

Three tiers, each earned

Tier	What changes	What it asks of them
1 · Find it	Ghosted pictures in each slot; cards in the tray	Recognise. Which of these is seven?
2 · Build it	No tray, no ghosts. Every slot starts at zero	Produce. Tap to add one, and count up to seven in each form
3 · Your way	Any three forms, their choice	Decide. Which three can I do, and can I prove it?

Five stars opens the next tier. A locked tier answers a tap with encouragement rather than doing nothing, and a child can always drop back down to one they have already opened.

02What the child gets out of it

The connection, not the drill. All six forms are on the glass at once, so the link between them is the thing on screen rather than something a worksheet implies across six pages.
A reason the near misses sting. Dragging a tally showing three into the tally slot fails, and the child sees immediately that the shape was right and the counting was not.
Help that is allowed. In tier two a child who cannot picture a domino can tap for a reminder — shown holding a different number, so it reminds them of the form without handing over the answer.
A reward in their own colour. A scratch-off they uncover across five rounds, then a star in a jar. Fifteen stars is a day's work.
No name on the screen. They type a name once; it is turned into a number and never stored. To the board they are a letter and a colour.

03What the data notices

A right answer says a child can do it. A wrong one says what they think — and where they aimed says which kind of wrong it is. Those are counted apart, because they want different lessons.

What happened	What it means	What the record says
A tally card dropped into the domino slot	Two pictures confused with each other	tally → domino, counted against both
A tally showing 3 dropped into the tally slot when the number is 10	The picture was read correctly and the quantity miscounted	right picture, wrong amount
The reminder button tapped on word	The form itself is not secure yet	Counted as half a miss
In tier two, a slot run past the target	Counting error, not recognition	Once per round, so fiddling does not bury them
Let go over the tray	Changed their mind	Nothing. That is not an error

This is the part a worksheet cannot do. A page of wrong answers tells you a child missed four. It cannot tell you that three of those four were the same two pictures being swapped for each other, which is one lesson rather than four.

04How it adapts to one child

The record ranks the six forms by misses, counting a request for help as half of one. The two at the top are the two to work on, and the tool will say so in a sentence:

“Work on tally and word. Everything else is holding.”

Then Practise just these two turns the board into that child's: their colour, their jar, their record. Three numbers across only those two forms, with four near misses drawn from the same two, so there is nowhere to hide. At the end it awards the same star the ordinary ladder gives, because the child doing the extra work is the last one who should go unrewarded.

It never offers a drill on one form alone. A single weak spot is paired with whatever it gets confused with most often, because matching one thing against itself is not a task.

05Being a better teammate

Most of what a kindergarten teacher knows about a child lives in their head and evaporates. The value of this record is not that it judges — it does not — but that it gives you something concrete to hand to someone else.

To a parent: “He can count to ten in any form you like. What he is doing is mixing up tallies and dominoes — same quantity, different picture. Here is what we are practising.” That is a far better conversation than “he is doing fine.”
To next year's teacher: two forms and a date, rather than a level.
To an interventionist: whether the gap is recognition or counting, which is the first question they will ask.
To yourself on a Sunday: who you have not actually watched since September. The roster is ordered by when each child was last at the board.

It is not an assessment. At a panel with a class watching you are teaching, and what can honestly be captured is who came up and what happened. That is a note, not a score. A board tool claiming to have assessed twenty children has assessed nobody.

Nothing is on the glass. No percentages, no scores a watching class can read. The record sits behind the teacher passcode, and un-hiding the button in a browser still gets you nothing without it.

06Using it

Set the passcode first, at /pin. Next number and Start over sit behind it, so a five-year-old cannot wipe their own jar.
Tier one is for the first week. Let the ladder move them; do not skip ahead manually unless you have a reason.
Read the mix-ups, not the bars. The bars tell you how much. The mix-ups tell you what to teach on Tuesday.

Open Build the Number →

NC.K.OA.1 asks a child to represent addition and subtraction with objects, fingers, mental images, drawings, sounds, acting out, verbal explanations and expressions — and to make connections among representations. That last clause is the one this tool exists for. NC.K.CC.3 covers writing the numeral.