PACING = First 5 days of school
Choose your own maths adventure with our interactive tools that allow you to build a custom playlist of inspirational maths activities and messages! To build your WIM week, select one video, one resource for creating a positive maths community, and one task per day and add to your playlist. Then click “See Summary” to play videos, download materials and save/share your WIM week! Check out these pre-made playlists curated by the youcubed team for first grade, middle school and high school and share your playlist on social media with #myWIM!
Share the “Why” with Students: Give the students the rationale behind the Math Talk. Let them know that they have great thinking that we can't see and this gives them a chance to share what's going on in their brains. This also gives everyone a chance to learn from each other lots of different ways we can think about a problem.
Initial Implementation : As you begin to implement Math Talks in your classroom, you will want to keep them simple. Your goal might be to have 2 or 3 students share their thinking, which you capture and record without much comment or questioning.
● Provide a safe environment. ● Start with easier problems so that students can learn the routine and to encourage wide participation.
● Present calculation problems horizontally. ● Provide quiet think time and a silent signal. ● Accept, respect, and consider all answers.
● Capture student thinking as faithfully as you can. ● Write the student’s name so that you can refer to _______’s strategy.
● Develop your poker face. Respond neutrally to students’ comments.
More information: Number Talk "Look fors" Math Talk Process Tips for Number Talks
Suggested Talks to get started:
Days 1-2: Dot Talks (choose one image per day)
Questions: How many do you see? How do you see them?
Suggested Steps:
Quickly show one of the dot images so students do not have time to count. Have students show a thumbs-up to the chest if they think they know how many dots. Depending on the number of students who are showing you a thumbs-up, you may wish to show it a second time.
Solicit student responses, right or wrong.
Have students do a Turn-and-Talk to discuss how they saw the dots.
Have a few students share how they saw the dots. Make several copies of the Dot Talk in order to record student thinking by circling the groupings they identify, and writing the corresponding equation. Record students’ names on the copies.
Summarize the Math Talk by connecting the equations to each other and to the dots.
Days 3-5 Number Strings
Question/Prompt: How much? How do you know?
Show the first expression, allow for discussion of a few strategies, then show the next expression. Do as many expressions from one string as time and interest allow. You do not have to do all of the problems in the string in one day.
Day 3
6 x 1⁄2
6 x 3 1⁄2
16 x 1⁄8
16 x 2 1⁄8
Day 4
200 x 5
200 x 0.5
200 x 5.5
199 x 5.5
Day 5
3.00 ÷ 25
0.50÷ 25
3.50 ÷ 25
4.0 ÷ 0.1
0.8 ÷ 0.1
4.8 ÷ 0.1
5.5 ÷ 0.5
Ready Teacher Toolbox- Lessons 0 for the first five days: Lessons to launch to review key concepts to prepare for the start of the school year and familiarize students with the flow of the Try-Discuss-Connect instructional routine.
Tech First 10 Days: gr6-8
Youcubed: Day 1: Building Shapes
This is one of our favorite team building activities. Students work together using a rope to create 3-D shapes. The teacher plays the role of the skeptic and asks students to justify how they know their shape satisfies its defined characteristics. Students will need everyone in their group to successfully build these complex shapes and provide a convincing argument. Content: Describing and making 2-D and 3-D shapes, making convincing arguments, critiquing other people's arguments
Ready Teacher Toolbox- Lessons 0 for the first five days: Lessons to launch to review key concepts to prepare for the start of the school year and familiarize students with the flow of the Try-Discuss-Connect instructional routine.
Tech First 10 Days: gr6-8
Youcubed: Day 2: Toothpick Squares
This activity allows students to see a growth pattern in different ways. We use the number talk approach to debrief the way students are ‘seeing’ the toothpicks so others have an opportunity to see different ways of looking at the problem. This helps students realize that there are different strategies for solving problems in maths and that maths is about generalizing how we see patterns. In this problem students will have an opportunity to generalize the number of toothpicks needed to make any size square. Some may choose to take this pattern further by using toothpicks and marshmallows to consider a 3-D pattern. Content: Pattern finding, generalizing, geometric representation, number sense
Ready Teacher Toolbox- Lessons 0 for the first five days: Lessons to launch to review key concepts to prepare for the start of the school year and familiarize students with the flow of the Try-Discuss-Connect instructional routine.
Tech First 10 Days: gr6-8
Youcubed: Day 3: One Cut Geometry
This is a mind-blowing activity! We love it here at Youcubed and every time we have used it people walk away celebrating the challenge and their mistakes! The goal is to create 2-D geometrical shapes by cutting them out of a folded piece of paper with just one cut. Are you intrigued? Join us on a wonderful adventure. Content: Symmetry, shapes, investigating, making conjectures, testing conjectures
Ready Teacher Toolbox- Lessons 0 for the first five days: Lessons to launch to review key concepts to prepare for the start of the school year and familiarize students with the flow of the Try-Discuss-Connect instructional routine.
Tech First 10 Days: gr6-8
Youcubed: Day 4: Art of Patterns
We talk about how mathematics is a creative open subject so this activity is an opportunity to connect some artwork with mathematics. Contemporary artist Sol LeWitt used lines, squares, and cubes to create wall drawings and three-dimensional structures. Content: Pattern finding, generalizing, geometric representation, number sense
Ready Teacher Toolbox- Lessons 0 for the first five days: Lessons to launch to review key concepts to prepare for the start of the school year and familiarize students with the flow of the Try-Discuss-Connect instructional routine.
Tech First 10 Days: gr6-8
Youcubed: Day 5: Framing Rectangles
In this activity students explore the relationship between the area of a rectangle and the number of squares that make up a border around it. This activity provides students an opportunity to explore the operations of addition and multiplication, and area and perimeter. Students will work to find patterns as they organize data and look for ways to record their observations. This activity makes space for young mathematicians to count, describe shapes, explore ideas, build with square tiles, investigate conjectures, analyze patterns, organize findings, add and takeaway square tiles, and create visuals to explain and justify their thinking. Content: Counting, making rectangles, making borders, organize findings, making conjectures, exploring
“Closure in a lesson does not mean to pack up and move on. Rather, it is a cognitive activity that helps students focus on what was learned and whether it made sense and had meaning.” How the Brain Learns Mathematics (2007) P. 104
There are many ways to wrap up and reflect the day's activities but this step is often overlooked or rushed. Purposely plan and allow time for students to have closure each day (even if it means setting a timer or daily alarm so you don't run out of time).
Ideas for closure activities