As outlined in my first post about the book Making Number Talks Matter, I am an advocate for the use of the routine or practice of Number Talks in classrooms to promote mathematical discourse, thinking, reasoning and justification. Over the last three years, I have “demo-ed” and been a part of number talks in many […]
The Debeck staff is working together around a school goal involving increasing students’ engagement in mathematics and their ability to communicate their mathematical thinking. During our professional learning time together, we have looked at assessments the teachers have done with their students and analyzed the themes and findings across grade groups and across the school […]
Since returning to my role as a teacher consultant in our district, I have been a huge advocate for Number Talks. I appreciate the focus on flexible thinking, number sense and how well they provide an opportunity for students to think about and practice mental math and personal strategies. Our current math curriculum as well […]
Last week I made one of my regular visits to the two grades 4&5 classes at Byng Elementary. For this set of number talks, we focused on multiplication facts and strategies the students could use to find other facts if they “knew” one related fact. For example, we began with 3×8 in one class (and […]
Last week I visited six classrooms in three schools to engage students in number talks and model this practice for teachers. At Byng, in the two grades 4&5 classes we focused on multiplication strings beginning with the fact, 8 X 7. Most students were able to call out the answer (56) and then we focused […]
The following are a collection of resources to support educators in planning and designing for mathematics and numeracy grounded in the BC K-7 mathematics curriculum. Many of these ideas can also apply to grades 8-12 contexts. BEGINNING OF THE SCHOOL YEAR As you begin planning for the school year, consider thinking about the story of […]
Here is a collection of elementary math resources to support schools and teachers as they develop continuity of learning plans as we plan for health or functional school closures here in British Columbia. Download the one-pager here: The weekly math plans from Spring of 2020 can be used as your daily numeracy component of 20 […]
As the province moved to remote learning from home due the COVID-19 pandemic, the Quilchena teachers and I met via Zoom to plan numeracy experiences for the students that were connected to our current context. I joined in on the class’ Zoom meetings for Math Chats where we did routines like number talks and WODBs […]
Similar to the K-2 and grades 3-5 big math ideas series, this year we offered a grades 6-9 series. For a variety of reasons, we were only able to hold one session in April. We focused on the big idea of computational fluency. Each teacher received the book Making Number Talks Matter by Cathy Humphreys […]
This month’s curricular competency focus is explain and justify mathematical ideas and decisions. This curricular competency is the same across grades K-12 and is included in the Grades 10-12 courses with the addition of “in many ways“. This competency falls under the organizer of “Communicating and Representing” is also connected to the Core Competency of Communication, particularly the […]