The classroom décor has been carefully selected and displayed. The name tags have been arranged and beautifully written. The smiles at Back-to-School night were a delightful way to culminate the first couple of weeks back, gearing up for the school year. But, what to do now…
Now that you’re settling down to prepare for the first few weeks of school, the to-do list is beginning to overflow once again. However, it is important to take the time now to slow down, especially with your class of eager students. Your smiling kiddos are craving routine, expectations, and accountability. Many of our students are coming from a summer in which routines were few and far between. As educators, it is our duty to make our classroom environments feel safe and engaging, but with a calming sense of clear routines being in place.
Luckily, the first couple of weeks are prioritized for building math communities and routines on our county pacing document. Focusing on numeracy routines, in particular, is a great way to begin to set your expectations for the school year while providing consistency to your students. These numeracy routines include Math Meetings and Number Talks.
Number Talks
Number Talks is a research-based numeracy routine used in many states nationwide. The research, ideas and resources for a Number Talk routine are provided in the book written by Sherry Parrish, located in each math class countywide.
Number Talks are purposeful math conversations that focus on a specific set of problems, called a string, or set. As Number Talks are meant to be completed mentally by the students, it is critical that you utilize close proximity to your advantage so that you’re able to interact with all of the students to truly gauge their understanding. For this reason, bringing the students to a separate location in the classroom is key!
Your role also revolves around being a facilitator. Therefore, it is important to develop a sense of a math community in the classroom so that students feel comfortable sharing amongst each other and interacting with one another’s shared strategies and solutions. Consider using sentence frames to help guide the students in interacting with one another.
Incorporate the instruction of how to use the Number Talk hand signals in your routine-building process. Guide the students in practicing using the signals respectfully in solving Number Talk strings.
You may also want to start the year by building up your students’ confidence levels. Use Number Talk strings from the prior grade level while you’re focusing on building your expectations for your Number Talk routines and procedures. The beginning of the year is a time for developing your routine, the content should remain light, as students are grasping the concept of what you expect out of them.
Since Number Talks also focuses on students being able to solve problems with accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility, classroom conversations can be quite lengthy! You may want to use a timer to help you stay on pace. You could consider assigning a job to one of your students to be the “timekeeper” in the Intermediate grade levels.
Math Meetings
Our second numeracy routine is the Math Meeting. Math Meetings were created for the purpose of engaging students in a purposeful warm-up that sets the tone of your math instruction. All Math Meetings activities are meant to be spiraled and carefully selected by the teacher to repeatedly focus on previously taught content. In doing so, students are able to maintain their proficiency with the skills. It is not a time to introduce new content. It is a time for students to each have a voice in the classroom, be able to engage with one another, share their thinking and respond with some form of EPR (Every Pupil Response) tool, such as with pinch cards, white boards, a template, tool or manipulative.
You will want to bring students together in a separate location in the classroom other than their desks to be able to observe their understanding of the concepts brought up in the Math Meeting activities. Consider using a carpeted area.
To build routines specific to your Math Meeting, organizing student and teacher materials should be a well thought-out process. Unlike Number Talks, Math Meetings are not meant to be completed mentally. Students are allowed to use materials. Since Math Meetings consist of 3-5 activities, you will want your teacher materials to be close to you, particularly if you need to quickly adjust during the Math Meeting depending on student needs.
You will also want to prepare for how you expect students to gather and use their materials during your meeting. Do you want your students to come to the carpet? Will they be bringing a gallon-sized bag with them filled with manipulatives, templates and/or a whiteboard? Will students walk up to the carpeted area and pick up a math toolkit box filled with their materials? Consider which ways to collect and distribute materials that will work best for your personal teaching style.
To Sum It Up
Building procedures and expectations for both numeracy routines in your classroom will go a long way to benefit your students this year. By providing them with consistency, practice in completing the routines, and by holding students accountable for following your expectations, your students should have great success in strengthening their number sense.
Additional Support
Your math coach is here to support you! Please reach out to your school-based coach for more information regarding building your routines and procedures for either numeracy routine.
Please feel free to watch your grade level’s Math Meeting or Number Talk video for any clarification as well. These videos can be found in the “Video” folder on your shared drive. Links are also provided below:
Videos
*Note: Same as GR3
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