EDUC115N Review #8

Number Talks #2

In my last post I introduced the idea of number talks. As I worked through session five of the How to Learn Math course I was shown examples of number talks from a college classroom and a grade three classroom. Granted the students in the college classroom were being taught how to use number talks, but the task still helped them understand math on a different level. 

One of the thing I am noticing is that students need to have a firm grasp of the times tables for this level of math to work, so as I think about teaching my strategies class part of the class will have to be dedicated to helping students memorize the times tables. Number talks can help with this, but I really believe the times tables will have to be visited everyday.

One method used in the number talks lessons was the use of dot cards. Students were shown dot cards and asked to describe to their peers how they added up the number of dots. This process had students talking mathematically and with precision. The teacher then created visualizations of what they were saying. It was really quite surprising seeing how ten dots on a piece of paper helped students learn the key lessons: numbers can be broken down, they can be manipulated, they can be decomposed into "friendly numbers."

After the dot cards lesson I saw how number talks were used to develop an understanding that math is far from static or concrete. Number talks gets students talking about creative, but precise, ways to solve problems in their heads. It gets students doing the talking and the explaining instead of the teacher, and number talks concludes with a visual representation of what was solved. This is a practice that will work in a jr. high classroom.