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Use Daily Number Talks to Strengthen Math Communication Skills

Tags

Mathematics Elementary School Strategy

Skills

Flexible Thinking Working Memory Abstract Reasoning

Use Daily Number Talks to Strengthen Math Communication Skills

If your students are uncomfortable using mathematical language or don't regularly participate in math class

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Students will strengthen their ability to explain their mathematical thinking through daily number talks.
  2. Teacher Takeaways: Number talks should be a daily part of math to be effective. They can be short, approximately 5 minutes, and used in place of a daily warm up. Use this daily ritual to ensure that everyone in the class is regularly speaking and contributing to the discussion.
  3. Class Activity: a) Put up a single problem on the board to discuss. It can be a mathematical equation or a word problem. Choose a problem students have studied and might readily know the answer to. What you are practicing is explaining why and how they got to an answer. b) For example, give a multi-digit problem that students can easily solve on paper but not easily in their heads. How could they use place value to show their thinking process? Give sufficient time for everyone to carefully consider the problem. c) Then have students share how they approached and solved the problem. Discussion can lead to looking at multiple ways to solve the same problem.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

According to the research of John Hattie, verbalizing and questioning in mathematics can have a significant positive effect on math understanding and computational fluency. Daily practice is best for students to grow comfortable using mathematical language and strengthening their math computation and reasoning skills.

Best-suited for students with weaker: Long-Term Memory, Metacognition, Short-Term Memory, Processing Speed, Working Memory (Source: Digital Promise Learner Variability Project)