This Math Was Made for Talking: Targeting Math Discussions
As a visiting teacher, I love to ask students what they think a “number talk” might be. It’s usually silent at first, and then a brave soul will say something like, “Is it when you talk…about numbers?” Their faces light up when that profound idea is confirmed. I have been in countless elementary and middle school classrooms in the last few years both observing and facilitating Number Talks (Sherry Parrish, 2010), and I am part of an amazing team that has trained over 1,000 teachers on their implementation since 2013. Number talks are changing how teachers and students interact with mathematics by opening up the discourse in the classroom to more than just a volley between teacher, student, teacher, student. They invite students to construct and consider multiple strategies for a single problem or string of related problems, and serve as formative assessment for teachers who want to know how their students are thinking about a problem. While these “open strategy sharing” conversations