Number Talks & Mathematical Practices

1. Number Talks & Mathematical Practices Todd Livingstone, Danny Jacobsmeyer, Randall Brown Mar Vista Elementary School Pajaro Valley Unified School District

2. Description of Practice • In Number Talks, students gather in a centralized area on the floor, a sequence of problems are given one at a time that are intended to provide students with opportunities to discover mathematical relationships within the sequence of problems. • Students are taught common hand signals to communicate their understanding which also aids with formative assessments for the teacher. • Students debate the solution, once agreed upon, various strategies are shared and explained by the students. • Students will make sense of mathematics, develop efficient computation strategies, communicate mathematically, to reason and prove solutions.

3. Links to Common CoreInstructional Shifts • The Shifts in Math • Focus strongly where the Standards focus. • Coherence: Think across grades, and link to major topics within grades. • Rigor: In major topics pursue conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and application with equity intensity. • Number talks school wide addresses these shifts. • Number talks also address many of the standards for mathematical practices.

4. Links to Common CoreInstructional Shifts • Mathematical practices are eight overarching standards that thread through all the grade levels and are not content specific but more related to mathematical habits. • Number talks address many of these standards for mathematical practices. • 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. • 6 Attend to precision. • 7 Look for and make use of structure. • 8 Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

5. Impact on Students Quotes from Mr. Jacobsmeyer’sMar Vista 2012-2013 6th grade class: • “It gave me a new way or a better way of approaching problems by not using the algorithm.” • “If you listened to your classmates explain their method, them you could get more ideas for other problems.” • “Say someone has a cool method, you could take various approaches to make you own method. • “Learning other methods and learning how others think, I can use strategies to solve more complex problems through breaking them down.”

6. Impact on Students

7. Tips on Implementation(Lessons Learned) Tips for Teachers: • Your are not teaching in the traditional sense, it’s more of a Socratic process. Students are discovering and you are guiding them through questions. • Take time to build in the routine and structure. • Give the process some time and intended results will follow Tips for Administrators: • Transition- go slow to go fast • Will not look like a traditional math class. • Support/materials (see following slide)

8. Resources & Tools for getting started • Daniel Jacobsmeyer and Todd Livingstone at Mar Vista • Daniel_Jacobsmeyer@pvusd.net • Todd_Livingsotne@pvusd.net • Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental math and Computation Strategies by Sherry Parrish, Math Solutions • www.insidemath.org : keyword search Number Talks • Monterey Bay Area Math Project www.mbamp.ucsc.edu/