Growing in Number Talks

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It’s been interesting to see the growth in students this year in using Number Talks. Right now, the team is trying to encourage students to subitize and decompose numbers into its parts with ease. With this in mind, we are using ten frames to show numbers in several ways. For this segment, we have shown the number 6 in a ten frame and have now shown the same quantity in a different manner. This will be done a couple of more times with the number 6, though not necessarily in consecutive days. The first student to speak looked at what I had written about there being less dots this week than last week (I was out sick earlier this week), then as he read his statement, he said, “No, wait” and raised his hand to revise his statement. Last week the top row was full with one dot on the bottom row. Some students are still wanting to get creative with the math sentence, such as “13 – 7 = 6.” I usually ask them if that’s what they notice about the image and they will shake their heads and continue looking. Some students are eager to show 1 finger that they have a method, willing to stop there, while other students immediately have 5 or 6 fingers held to their chests to compete with how many methods they have found to explain the math image. However, they are growing. The students now know to expand on what they see with a math sentence. Perhaps this isn’t something I should ask? If a student notices 4 and 2, I’ll ask the student to come up to the board to show exactly how he/she saw 4 and 2 and explain how this would be described in a math sentence. Though, one student did look at the ten frame from a geometry perspective, I didn’t consider it a frustration since it’s one of our current spiral review objectives :).
What’s next?
I’d like to move towards the students talking to one another, asking questions, expanding or supporting one another’s statements. However, right now there is interest in different perspectives and aha moments in spotting a new way to view numbers. Also, some students aren’t sold on participating yet. I’m hoping this will come with time. Lovin’ it.

4 thoughts on “Growing in Number Talks

  1. I thank you so much for allowing your students to enter the problem and conversation with freedom – your environment is so safe that even the student that didn’t really answer your question about how many dots was comfortable talking about something he/she noticed which was the geometrical thinking with the circles, squares, sides, and vertices. Thank you for recording those thoughts, too. This is so good to establish a safe environment early in the year!! Thank you!

  2. I like how you recorded your students responses. It is interesting to me all the creative ways that our students come up with to explain their thinking. In the end, this is the key to their understanding. Thanks for sharing.

  3. I love that your students are learning from each other and understanding that their are different perspectives in viewing numbers. That definitely makes the math so much more meaningful to them and helps them to listen to others in a more responsive way.

  4. I love how your students are “revising their thinking”. That is a great strategy to ask them What they notice” to make sure their thinking relates to what is being shown. Students sometimes want to just BE CREATIVE to be creative, but it is then hard to relate it to the image. This looks like you are off to a great start!

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