Number Talks

The GOAL of Number Talks: To talk about Numbers and Build Number Sense

Number Sense is "...a good intuition about numbers and their relationships. It develops gradually as a result of exploring numbers, visualizing them in a variety of contexts, and relating them in ways that are not limited by traditional algorithms." ~Howden, 1989

Inside Mathematics: Problem of the Month

Number Talks Archive

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Welcome

This site is created to store all the math resources available for ACCESS staff (teachers, paraeducators, tutors, etc.) It is still work in progress. Please be patient as things get upgraded. Feel free to make suggestions or corrections by emailing me. Thank you for all the work you do with our students. I hope the resources on this site will be useful for you and your students in the classroom.

~Katherine Lu

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Teaching Math to People Who Think They Hate ItA popular Cornell professor tries to help language-arts types learn how to "make math" instead of just studying it.

Highlighting Mistakes: A Grading StrategySee how highlighting mistakes and not giving a grade on a math test enhances student learning. This grading strategy also builds a classroom culture that values risk and learning from mistakes.

"If we only teach conceptual approaches to math without developing skill at actually solving math problems, students will feel weak. Their mathematical powers will be flimsy. And if they don't memorize anything, if they don't know the basic facts of addition and multiplication or, later, geometry or still later, calculus, it becomes impossible for them to be creative. It's like in music. You need to have technique before you can create a composition of your own. But if all we do is teach technique, no one will want to play music at all."

From Steven Strogatz, Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cornell University

What are Number Talks?

A brief daily practice where students mentally solve computation problems and talk about their strategies.
Students learn to make sense of mathematics in their own ways
Students learn to dig deeper into why mathematical procedures work
Students learn to critique and build on the ideas of their peers and support their answer with mathematical reasoning

[From Math Perspective Website]

From Stanford Onlines How To Learn Math for Teachers and Parents Number Talks.mp4

Ted Talk on Teaching Kids real math with computers

Conrad Wolfram- Teaching kids real math with computers.mp4

Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP)

Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them

Reason abstractly and quantitatively

Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others

Model with mathematics

Use appropriate tools strategically

Attend to precision

Look for and make use of structure

Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

High-School-CCSS-Modeling-Standards.pdf