Just in case you didn't get a chance to hop over to Erin's blog for the Blog Swap and Hop...thought I'd re-post here....
Have you ever heard of "Number Talks"?
I've been
a using Number Talks for the past year and become a big fan of this wonderful
technique to get kids talking about math.
Listening to my kiddos as they talked about the different card patterns
really gave me an understanding of what they "thought" about numbers
and helped me see the ways they used strategies to create numbers.
I
devoured the book by Sherry Parrish:
Number
Talks: Helping Children Build
Mental Math and Computation Strategies
which
gave me a ton of information and ideas on how to use the number talks in my
class. The book came with a dvd of
how number talks are conducted in different classrooms and was very helpful! You can also find number talk examples
on YouTube if you search for the keywords: number talks.
Sherry talks about using dot images, rekenreks, double ten-frames, and
number sentences to guide the number talks for different addition
strategies...("Counting All and Counting
On"..."Double or Near Doubles"...and my personal favorite
"Making Tens").
Dot image
cards are easy to create using those cool bingo dot stamp bottles or brightly
colored round stickers you can find in Walmart, Target, or an Office Supply
Store. I used the largest index
cards (I think they were 5X7) and created the dot images that Sherry suggests
in the book. I labeled the cards
in subsets of A, B,C....etc and then each subset had 3 cards to look at in one
number talk...A-1, A-2, A-3....I punched a hole in the set of cards A-1 through
I-3 and then hung them on a hook near the area where we conducted
calendar....book read alouds....whole group games...(in other words my
"meeting area")...or as we like to say in the South "the meetin'
area :)
I also
created a powerpoint slide show of the dot images so that if we had some
"down time" and the projector was going, I could flash some images
and see what they thought...
Sherry
suggests using 3-5 cards or images during a number talk time and asking the
questions:
"How
many _____ do you see? How do you
see them?"
Double
Ten-Frames are something I use with my calendar. I have the kids use coins to fill
in the frames as we add another day....I have 2 ten frames on the calendar...at
the beginning of the year we just use dots to fill in the ten frames as the
days go by...then we use nickels....then move up to dimes...for the final
quarter I'll have the kids fill thef first ten frame with dimes and the second
with nickels... somewhere towards the end of the year we add a third frame and
use pennies...
I created
a powerpoint for all the double ten-frame sets recommended in Sherry's book to
use with the projector....I think I'll go ahead and print the slides onto
cardstock, laminate, and ring together to keep at the "meetin' area"
to use with the number talks this year.
My mom and dad
created Rekenreks using bamboo skewers, pony beads, and small
blocks of
wood from my dad's woodshop. The
kids enjoyed using these small versions of the rekenreks to solve problems and
work out story problems.
I created a couple of PowerPoint shows
to use with the Rekenreks Sherry talks about in her book...there's also a great
app called " Number Rack" that I use with the kids...
You can
manipulate the amount of bead rows you show as well as open a large mystery box
to cover some of the beads and ask how many do you see? ...how many are covered?
You can even add as more than one line of beads to help practice with the double digits.
Number
Talks has been a great addition into my math program. It allows the kids to use "Math Talk" and explain
to each other what they see and how they see it.
Click HERE for a download of the Rekenrek Powerpoint I created to use with the Number Talks this year. I hope it goes as well as the iPad app did last year :) You can also get the download of the powerpoint by click on the picture below!
Thanks again to Erin for letting me guest post today!!
Hope you
are having a wonderful day!
Be sure
to hop over to some of the other blogs that are sharing this wonderful day and if you get a chance...hop by the "swamp" sometime!
swampfrogfirstgraders.blogspot.com
Check out all the other blogs that are participating in the
TT Blog Swap and Hop :)
