Before starting work at the stations, what concept should Mrs. Brooks teach her first-grade class?

Teaching the concept of part-part-whole is crucial for first graders as it helps them understand how numbers and quantities are related to each other. This foundational concept lays the groundwork for more complex mathematical operations, such as addition and subtraction. By exploring how a whole can be divided into parts and how those parts can combine to form a whole, students begin to grasp the relationships between numbers, which is essential for their mathematical development. Part-part-whole activities can involve using visual aids, manipulatives, or real-life scenarios, making the learning process engaging and concrete.

The other concepts, while important in their own right, serve different purposes in a first-grade curriculum. For instance, understanding one more and one less focuses on sequential counting, which is beneficial, but it does not encompass the broader understanding of number relationships that part-part-whole does. Benchmarking numbers relates to estimating and comparing values, which is more advanced. Spatial concepts deal with understanding shapes and their properties, which is also important but does not directly connect to the immediate needs of arithmetic operations that students will encounter at this stage. All in all, focusing on part-part-whole equips students with critical reasoning skills as they move forward in their mathematical education.