Adventures in Math

If you teach math and are not doing number talks in your classroom, you and your kiddos are missing out! If you're looking for high engagement, mathematical discourse, risk taking and deep student thinking, number talks are the ticket. Simply put, "Number talks are 5-15 minutes classroom conversations around purposefully crafted computation problems." ~Sherry Parrish  The name "number talks" is fitting because it means engaging students in, you guessed it, talking about numbers. The goal of number talks is computational fluency, and this is furthered by students using mental math to become more flexible and efficient in their problem solving. I have been so lucky this year to support teachers in bringing number talks into their classroom. I've gotten to train teachers, demonstrate number talks as a guest teacher, and watch teachers hone their own practice in their classrooms. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of working with a 4th grade class on a num

Myth : We are no longer working towards fact fluency in math, and students no longer have to know their math facts. Fact : The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics call for rigor  which "requires that conceptual understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and application be approached with equal intensity" Fluency is defined as accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility. So, indeed, fluency is the end goal of all the foundational work that we are doing in math. Furthermore, students are indeed expected to have fluency with math facts for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division at the following grade levels: The big picture here is that "fluency" is no longer just speed an accuracy. One of my favorite quotes regarding fluency comes from Henri Poincare: "Number sense and fact fluency is built up of facts as a house is of stones, but a collection of facts is no more [fact fluency] than a pile of stones is a house." YES. THAT.