Hey Kinder Friends,
I think we are finally moving right along. Math assessments are done and now we have a chance to settle into a nice routine. As I completed the math assessments I had a clear picture of my students in one respect. And as we began Number Talks a slightly different picture of my students began to emerge. I decided to take Number Talks very slow this year in the beginning and I planned for it over the summer. I practiced my role and made some personal goals of the things I needed to improve on. One of the first steps I needed to focus on was establishing the math community during Number Talks. In the beginning I had to make some adjustments for class size and visual limitations so we had a lot of trial and error as we would come to the meeting area. We have now moved on to practicing our hand signals and I am working on my own goals of refining the teacher talk. They get a chance to practice and so do I. I have been on the hunt for books that I will use this year during Number Talks and this one came as a suggestion from one of my math specialists.
This is a perfect book especially for the beginning. The book walks through the important things about being one, two, three, four and five and six. I especially like how five and six are together because as a class the children are usually just five or six years old. The book has good rhythm and rhyme. I plan on reading this book this week. I thought it was the best choice since took pictures near our calendar and we are posting them on our The Month When We Were Born graph that will be on our timeline. This will serve as a meaningful introduction to graphs and help me later to discuss using the number five as a benchmark number. In our class five is meaningful because we are five...but you knew that!
When we read the book again we will use it during a Number Talk and continue practicing our hand signals and developing a math community. Like I said previously, I noticed this week that a slightly different picture is emerging as we begin Number Talks in the classroom. I have learned so much about what the children know that is not on any math assessment. Although this process seems slow at times, I keep reminding myself that this is time well spent and it will pay off in the end. But for someone like me, it is still hard to hold back a little because I want to jump right in! All in all, we have a good starting point and I am looking forward to sharing it here with you.
If you have previously purchased this file please go back and download the updates! Considering so much time and effort has been spent on planning for and setting up and building a math community and routine, I had to consider what I would do for this time period when I had a substitute in my classroom this year. This was not something I could really explain to a sub on a piece of paper and I wanted it to remain consistent. To avoid any confusion and ease my own sub planning I needed a "go to" Number Talking resource that could keep us moving right along even if I was not in class.
I have these files saved on my computer and they are ready to go at a moments notice for a sub day or a bad day...because you know we ALL have those! You know you have to plan for just about everything!
1 comment:
Thank you for writing about number talks. This is something we are doing at our school also and I am curious how another teacher does it. Thanks for sharing.
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