It's Tina from Tina's Teaching Treasures!
This year I have really been focussing on my numeracy program. I felt my kiddos just weren't grasping 'number sense' the way they needed to in order to become successful mathematicians in the upper grades. Enter: Number Talks!
I was lucky enough to have an AMAZING math guru in my school building and she introduced us to the idea of "number talks". Kristin, our grade 8 math teacher is seriously amazing (and also super nice and adorable, some people have it all!) and she lead a staff learning journey on Number Talks in the classroom. It was amazing to see how quickly you can get these up and running, norms set and kids engaged with this strategy.
The book by Sherry Parrish is an amazing place to start. It is easy to read, had LOTS and LOTS of clear examples and photos and is very teacher friendly. I highly recommend it.
Look at one my student's responses to number talks by the end of the year, that sort of math thinking and awareness makes my teacher heart skip a beat! I love that this easy, '10 minute a day' strategy can help my students in such an important way.
For more math communication ideas, check out my blog post on "Communication in Math"
How do you increase communication and make student thinking visible in the math classroom? Tell me in the comments below!
I just ordered this book from the OCT library Tina...glad to know it's a good one.
ReplyDeleteBeth
Thinking of Teaching
It is awesome!!! You will enjoy it!
ReplyDeleteI have used this for the last two years with my first graders. It really made a difference in how the students solved problems. I made a poster that had a space for students' name, how they solved the problem and what strategies they used. I usually asked four students a day to share their answers and then left their strategies up for a day or two. It motivated the students to solve the problem to get their name on the poster and to try a strategy that their friend used. Totally changed my math instruction :)
ReplyDeleteI love that idea, Amanda!! So glad to here it works in your classroom as well! After the first few days I was convinced!
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