Number Talks How to Integrate the Mathematical Habits

Number Talks How to Integrate the Mathematical Habits of Mind into the Number Talks Routine

Teaching Math to Elementary Students • Educators need to increase their understanding of mathematics • Seek deeper insight into how students learn mathematics • Refine lessons to best promote student learning

Mathematics Habits of Mind 1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. 2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively. 3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. 4. Model with mathematics. 5. Use appropriate tools strategically. 6. Attend to precision. 7. Look for and make use of structure. 8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

Let’s do a kindergarten Number Talk

What was going on while you were doing a Number Talk? • • Formative Assessment of student understanding Differentiating Instruction Scaffolding Understanding Demonstrating multiple approaches to solve problems Supporting the development of social and emotional skills Building self-confidence Encouraging perseverance Having a really good time learning

Why Number Talks? Number talks are firmly grounded in the dispositions and processes of the Mathematical Habits of Mind while simultaneously addressing content standards in two domains: • Operations and Algebraic Thinking • Number and Operations in Base Ten

Let’s do a first grade Number Talk

How do I fit the Mathematical Habits of Mind in daily Number Talks? Number talks are an accessible way to reach deep into and draw upon the Mathematical Habits of Mind to promote numerical reasoning and mathematically powerful students.

Let’s do a 4 th grade Number Talk

Number Talks Help Children Build Mental Math And Computation Strategies The goal of Number Talks is not to teach strategies, but to provide a platform for students to invent, construct, and make sense of important foundations in number.

How do we make the change? Number Talks are best described as a classroom conversation around purposefully crafted computation problems that are solved mentally. • The first step in having a successful Number Talk is to allow students to think aloud and share their thinking with others without interruption, even if their assumption is incorrect.

What is the philosophy? By sharing and defending their solutions and strategies, students have the opportunity to collectively reason about numbers while building connections to key conceptual ideas in mathematics

What is my role as a teacher? Since the heart of number talks is classroom conversations, it is the teacher’s role to be the facilitator. • keep the discussion focused on the important mathematics • help students learn to structure their comments and wonderings

What is the role of mental math? Mental computation is a key component of Number Talks because it encourages students to build on number relationships to solve problems instead of relying on memorized procedures.

Inter-relational properties of numbers When students approach problems without paper and pencil they are encouraged to rely on what they know and understand about the numbers and how they are interrelated.

Number efficiency Mental computation causes students to be efficient with the numbers to avoid holding numerous quantities in their head.

Number Talks are a purposeful vehicle for… • • Making sense of mathematics Developing efficient computational strategies Communicating mathematically Reasoning and proving solutions Using appropriate tools strategically. Attending to precision. Looking for and make use of structure. Looking for and expressing regularity in repeated reasoning.

Questions?