Book #2 The King's Commissioner

Book #2
The King’s Commissioners by Aileen Friedman
Friedman, A. (1994). The king’s commissioners. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Summary:
This book tells the story about a king who has so many royal commissioners that he loses track of how many there are. Every time he has a problem in his kingdom, the king appoints a new commissioner for that problem. There is a commissioner for flat tires, chicken pox, mismatched socks, and wrong turns, to mention a few. To find out how many there are the king tells his commissioners to show up to be counted. His royal advisors both count them and one count them by two’s and the other by 5’s. But the kind just wants a total number, not groups of numbers. So his princess daughter comes up with a plan to line the commissioners up in rows of ten and count them. Her father, the king, understands her and she shows him that there is more than one way to count.

Standards:
SC.2-2 Numbers and Operations: The student will demonstrate through the mathematical processes an understanding of the base-ten numeration system; place values; and accurate, efficient, and generalizable methods of adding and subtracting whole numbers.

Objectives:
The student will be able to understand the basic idea of our place value system. The student will recognize that there are multiple ways to add up numbers to get a total.

Materials:
Friedman, A. (1994). The king’s commissioners. New York, NY: Scholastic.

Procedures:
Before reading the book talk with students about what a commissioner is. After clarifying that a commissioner is someone who helps the king with important matters read the story. Afterwards ask questions, such as, why was the king confused by the royal advisors’ counting methods? Why did the princess’s idea make sense to the king? How did the princess convince the king? After discussing these questions, revisit how the two royal advisors and the princess counted, referring to the illustrations in the book, depicting the tally marks and rows of tens. Count together as a class by 2’s, 5’s, and 10’s to get the total. Finally discuss the difference in the counting methods and which one was the easiest. You could also use counters to illustrate this for those students who are struggling to see the difference.