Professional Development

Parkland Numeracy Lab Experience

The numeracy lab has found a new home at Parkland Elementary!  There was a lot of staff interest in using the space collaboratively between the teachers, students and mentor teachers.  Luckily, we were able to find 3 consecutive days and created a schedule to accommodate all 12 divisions.

Our goal was to explore the space and investigate math through a new lens by using a variety of thinking tools and materials.  The staff consensus was to participate in a ‘math workshop’ type lesson format, where we launch the lesson with a numeracy routine and then further explore the specific math goal through learning stations.  After some discussion, we decided to focus on the Number Talks routine by Sherry Parrish and then have stations that were related to number sense.  If there was one routine that I would dedicate myself to, it would be number talks! It is a wonderful routine that supports mental math skills, communication skills, flexibility in thinking about numbers, and supports computational fluency.

 

Our redesigned curriculum in BC supports the development of curricular competencies throughout the grades.  These 3 days at Parkland was an opportunity to investigate how competencies and learning stations can be similar, yet different, at each grade level.  The flexibility the curriculum provides allows us to play with number concepts in open-ended ways, has multiple entry points and is inclusive of most learning styles.

 

Curricular Competency Connections:

Reasoning and Analyzing: Develop mental math strategies and abilities to make sense of quantities.

Understanding and Solving: Develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry and problem solving.

Communicating and Representing: Communicate mathematical thinking in many ways.

Connecting and Reflecting: Reflect on mathematical thinking.

 

Routine: Number Talks – How Number Talks progress across grades?

 

K/1	1 / 2	3/4	4/5
Subitizing cards Learning goal: recognizing small groups of numbers; making 10	Learning goal: numbers are made of smaller numbers; making 10	Learning goal: Compensating to make friendly numbers; bridging over 10 (landmarks of 10, 25, 100)	Learning goal: Compensating to make friendly numbers; bridging over 10 (landmarks of 10, 25, 100)
Dot sets for subitizing (counting all, counting on; how many ways can you see/group these dots?)	Number string: 7 + 3 7 + 5 + 3 3 + 6 + 7	Number string: 9 + 8 19 + 5 9 + 26 16 + 19	Number string: 249 + 22 248 + 49 225 + 49 299 + 26

 

I have copied and pasted my planning template to illustrate how number talks progress throughout the grades.  At the early stages, we are focusing on subitizing which the ability is to instantly recognize a small set of numbers.  This skill helps students look for patterns in numbers, it saves them time when counting, and it supports the development of more complex counting skills. We would show the students a set of dot cards and then ask them ‘How many did you see?’ and ‘How did you see it?’  Through these mathematical discussions, we are supporting the students’ vocabulary and communication skills.  We were also asking for students to look for patterns and make connections to their peers’ strategies (e.g., ‘Who else saw it this way?’).

 

In the primary grades, we chose to highlight the strategy of Making 10 and compensating to build friendly numbers.  This concept is an important mental math skill, whether you’re working with small numbers or big numbers.  With the grade 1 and 2’s, most students were familiar and comfortable with using 10-frames.  Using this visual to see how far away they are from 10 helped with their computational fluency.  They could also see that if they borrowed a number from one addend, that they could make a friendly number (e.g., 9 + 8 could become 10 + 7).

 

In the intermediate grades, we continued with the strategy of bridging over 10 and using landmark numbers.  Like in the younger grades, we would collect a variety of student responses on how many ways they could solve these equations.  Then we would ask them to see the similarities and differences between the strategies.  Students were able to identify the pattern within the number strings (249 + 22;

248 + 49; 225 + 49; 299 + 26) which supported their computational fluency as well as stretched their thinking to find creative ways to decompose and compose numbers.

      

 

Learning stations:

Station	Purpose	Station	Purpose
Cuisinaire Rods *matching *making squares of different sizes	“Cracking the colour code” – number identification, decomposing numbers Spatial reasoning	Counting Collections	One-to-one correspondence; grouping, re-grouping; skip counting; ordering and comparing numbers
Tent cards with Base Ten Blocks	Place Value explorations, decomposing numbers	Numerals with Dice and gems	Recognizing, making and ordering numbers; representing numbers in different ways

                               

Making Learning Visible by Triangulating Evidence

Observation: Watching students interact during learning stations and taking anecdotal notes.

Conversation: Number Talks Routines.

Product: Students engaging with the materials and recording their thinking on paper.

 

 

The learning stations were set up intentionally to promote play, conversation, problem-solving, creativity and perseverance.  In general, students were eager and enthusiastic to explore with the materials.  At times, often after 15-20 minutes, there were lulls in engagement when students felt they were “done” with the stations.  But a simple teacher prompt would often spark their interest again (e.g., “Is there another way you can explore at that station?”).

 

Debrief Circles or Knowledge-Building Circles:

After we cleaned up the stations, we would collect ourselves back in a circle in front of the whiteboard.  This was our time to debrief what math was learned, what was challenging, what was engaging, and if there were any lingering questions or requests for what we could do together next time.

We passed around a talking rock with the word Courage written on it, as it often does take a lot of courage to speak in front of your peers about what learning has taken place.  Often, students can feel vulnerable with this type of discussion, so we front load it by saying that you can always choose to pass.  We noticed that most students did choose to share their learning, which speaks highly to the respectful classroom community that has been developed in each classroom at Parkland.

I took notes when students shared their learning as it helps inform our next steps in planning.

 

Teacher Reflections:

“My experience with my class was fantastic! They were so focused and eager to explore the centers after you introduced all the activity areas.  You had my students so eager to explore each area that they did  not need much direction and that is not typical for my group   They were self-motivated thanks to your introduction…I realized after being in your wonderful space that I need to set up more self-directed areas where they can explore and learn mental math strategies in their own way instead of me giving them too much direction.  I need to allow them more time to figure it out in their own way…the groans from my students when we had to clean up said it all…”

 

“It was great for [the students] to have a dedicated Math room with materials that we don’t have in our classroom.  I’m hoping to slowly add to my materials so that I can recreate some of the stations that you had set up. I would love to learn more about number talks.”

 

“I thought everything was so awesome! I loved the variety of activities and everyone was able to choose an interesting activity or 2.”

 

Next Steps:

There continues to be interest in learning some new numeracy routines and exploring learning stations with a different content area, perhaps measurement?!