Book Review- Teaching Numeracy and a FREEBIE

Teaching Numeracy- 9 Critical habits to Ignite Mathematical Thinking

I read this book for my Capstone project and thought I would share a review of it with you. It has so many great ideas and really got me excited about teaching math. The habit that really jumped out at me for my Math Literacy work was numbers 8.

Habit 8: Develop Vocabulary

When I read Habit 8: Develop Vocabulary, I just kept nodding my head. What stuck out at me right away was that the book mentioned that word knowledge is strongly linked to academic success. If that is true, then we really do need to make Mathematical vocabulary instruction a higher priority. Mathematics has a language of it's own and students need time to learn this language, use it in context and develop their own understanding of the words that are specific to math. 

Explore Word Origins

One thing that resonated with me was teaching students about the words and looking at their meanings and their origins. The students in my class did this all on their own. We had been working on Mathematical vocabulary for a few weeks now and they were starting to get used to talking about Math and using the proper terms. On this particular day, I introduced them to the word "Decompose". I asked them to take a guess at what the word meant. Or if it made them think of anything. One of my students raised their hand excitedly. I called on him and he said, "Decompose looks like the word compost to me!" And Bang! A connection had been made. We used this to talk about compost. What happens to food in the compost? It breaks down. What happens to numbers when we decompose them?  I didn't need to tell them. Their hands all rushed up, "They break down! Numbers break down!" Making connections is a technique that we are used to in Language Arts and I feel it is not being explored enough in Math. After this, my students never had trouble remembering the word decomposing as they had made a personal connection to it. 

Conduct a Word Hunt 

Hand out textbooks to students and have them work in partners. Tell them to look through the book and find words that they know and words that they do not know or understand yet. They can record these words onto a sheet to refer back to as they learn more words. I have made a sheet that you can download here.

Talk a Mile a Minute 


Another idea that I loved. I adapted it to suit our needs. this is how we played it in our room. Have the students in pairs. One student faces the word wall and the other faces away from it. The student facing the wall picks a word on the wall and starts to talk fast about the word without saying it. Once the student guesses the word, move onto a new word. give the students 1-2 minutes. When you call stop- see how many words they were able to get their partner to guess correctly. Switch places and repeat. 

Math Word Wall Activities and a Freebie

Math Word Walls- Part 2

Click here to go back and read Part 1 if you haven't done so already.

It takes a little while to build up enough words on your while to do some of these activities. Once you have about ten words on the wall, you are good to go. These are some of our favourites but I am sure there are more ideas. Let me know if you have tried and true activities that your students love.

Have fun!

1. Play MATHGO - Here is a link to the download so you can play with your class! The rules are simple. The students choose 9 words from the wall and write them wherever they want. Next, the teacher calls out definitions and the students cover the words according to the definition. The goal is to get three in a row. If you only have ten words on your wall, quite a few students will call out MATHGO at the same time. That's fine.  Hand out your prizes if you like and clear the boards to start over. If you have Math Literacy bags, students can keep these in their bags, or you can start a new one after more words are added to your wall.

2. Word Cheers or Chants- This is borrowed directly from the common Language word wall activities but with a twist. We use many different cheers for our words, but then we add in the short definition to go with them. Sometimes we DON'T chant each letter but rather each word. This is a variation from what you may be used to.  Our Math word wall has the definitions with the words, so saying the definition is easy they can just read it off the wall. Here are some of our favourite types of cheers:
  -Beat it- tap it out on our desks as we go
  -Reach for the stars- Reach up alternating arms for each letter
  -Snap it- Snap a finger for each word in the definition
  -Deep Voices- call it out low and slow
  -Knee Slaps- Slap your knee for each word or letter
  -Toe Touches- touch your toe for each word

3. Definition Call- Out - The teacher calls out a definition. Students listen and when they think they know the word, they hold a thumbs up sign in front of their chest and sit quietly. No talking. Say the definition and/or give clues until you see most of the class with thumbs up. Call out the word "Release!" and the students get to say the word together. This gives most of the class the time they might need to search the wall for the word and keeps others from calling out. It works really well.

4. Make your word wall- In groups, give students a copy of the words on the actual wall. have them cut them up and arrange them into categories or groups. Let them decide which words go together. if your words are arranged this way already, you can either cover them up or take them down so students get the chance to arrange them without reference. I use a few sheets of chart paper to cover mine up.  You can also give students some blank paper and markers and they can add other words in that they think the wall might be missing.

5. Play Hot Seat- Choose one student to sit in the hot seat facing the class away from the wall. The teacher points to a word on the wall. Students can now raise their hand to give clues to the student in the Hot Seat. They are not to give the exact description but rather clues. They can give example or non-example or facts and characteristics of the word.

6. Frayer Model Sheets- hand out a frayer model sheet and have students choose a word from the wall and then fill out the sheet at their desk. These can be kept together and stapled into a booklet once they get enough words. Here is a sheet that I have created that we use in our class.

Math Word Walls

No doubt, you've seen word walls for language literacy. What about mathematical literacy?  As part of my Capstone project for my diploma, I have began incorporating a math word wall into my room. I love it! I am so proud of my students and all of the words they are learning and using. It is fun to hear them talking during math and hear one students say to another, "You need to decompose that number first. It will make it easier to add." or "That is not a reasonable answer. Remember what Mrs. Teague said. It needs to be logical and that is way way way off!" 

How to get started: 

First, you will need to find yourself a set of word cards for the wall. these are not easy to find in stores, but luckily there are a few great downloadable ones out there. Which words you choose comes down to personal choice. What do you want your students to use the words for? How big do you want them? Do you want the definition on them? Here are some of my favourites: 

1. Broward free word wall- this is a smaller set of words but they have little pictures to help students remember what the word is- I like that!

2. 3 Word types- free- this is a neat set of words- they have the same word three times per 8.5 X 11 page. The first is just the word, the second has a word and little picture and the third has the word, picture and definition. 

3. Teachers Pay Teachers- using the search term math word wall there are many to choose from. 

4. Teaching and Tapas math word wall- this is the wall that I purchased above. It is colour coded for the main strands of math. it also includes the definition and a little picture beside each word. I liked these because they included the three items I wanted and also came in three sizes. I used the largest sized words for my wall but you can also print off smaller words for students to use at centers etc... 

5. Virginia DOE free word wall words per grade - I found these after I purchased mine and I love them! They are full page which is great for visibility in the room. They would take up more space but you could rotate words as needed. 

Now what? 

The next step is to prepare your words. I had mine printed at Staples. It cost just over $25 for my set of words. In retrospect, there are some words that I think I may never use and I could have saved some money by not printing them but then again, it is nice to have a full and complete set of words ready to go. Laminate them and you are ready to go. I keep mine separated by colour. this makes it easier to find the words suited to the strand we are learning at the time. 

Setting up your wall

There are LOTS of options here. Many who have used language word walls before may think of placing the words in alphabetical order. This is not needed for a Math word wall as it will contain a lot less words and they are grouped differently, similar to grouping a language wall by placing nouns together or colour words together.  Some people just put up the words for their present unit. So far, I have just added the words we have studied. I am not sure what I will do when our little bulletin area is full. What are your thoughts? 

Click here part 2- What to do with your wall? 

Number Talks

Click on the image to go to Amazon

One of the newest ideas that I have implemented with my work on math Literacy has been daily Number Talks. The book by Sherry Parrish outlines them perfectly and how to conduct them. These largely revolve around mental math strategies. You can also read this short article about them  to get you started and give you a brief intro. in them.
Number talks are short- they typically last 10-15 minutes. There is one strategy or goal for each week so that the talks for that week are cohesive.

Decomposing Numbers to add

This past week our number talks have been about Decomposing Numbers. The coolest part about my work with math vocabulary and language has been watching my students learn the new words. This week, when I introduced the word decompose on the board, they were quick to notice it looked a lot like compost. And wham! From there on out, it was EASY to teach it to them. Decomposing numbers is breaking them down into their parts to make it easier to add. Compost breaks down food. An instant connection was formed. I told them their brains are like little worms eating away the number into it's pieces.

So, what are Number Talks? 
1. Number talks are short. I put up four or five questions on the board. I then give them 2-3 minutes to solve them in their head. I tell them that some of them may only solve one while others may solve all of them. When they feel like they have solved one or more, they are to give me the thumbs up sign against their chest.
2. Next, we do a turn and talk to someone near us. it can be a group of 2 or 3 students talking. The main rule is that the talk must be about what answer they got to the number sentences and HOW they figured it out.
3. Lastly, we turn back to the teacher and I ask for volunteers to tell me which number sentence they answered. They then tell me how they arrived at their answer.


This week, responses (the question was 17+13) have gone from: "I started with the big number and counted up." to "I know that 13 is 10+3 and 17 is 10+7 so I added the two tens to get 20 and then I added the 7+3 to get 10. Then I added that 10 to my 20 to find out it was 30." to "I started with 17 and added the 3 from the 13 to get twenty. I then had 10 left over from the 13 so I added that 10 to my 20 to get 30."

It is a great way for students to share their thinking and for them to see that there is  more than one way to arrive at an answer. I found this great resource for some weekly themes for your talks.
They are really easy to add into your daily routine and well worth the time!  I say go for it!

What's the Question?

What makes a good Math teacher? 

"Use group problem-solving to stimulate students to apply their mathematical thinking skills (Artzt & Armour-Thomas, 1992)"

Working on our problems

As part of our continued math Talk, we have been spending a lot of time on word problems. I think it is important to students to approach them from all angles. This includes looking at them backwards by writing the questions. I loved this resource called What's the question?  by Brandi Wayment from The Research based Classroom.  I am firm believer in saving time and if someone has already created a great resource, use it! You then free up more time to work on other projects for your students. This is a great resource. Basically, it is a large set of sheets like the above that give the answer.

Love her story for how the last bird showed up. 

We walked through a demo. of this very problem as a class first. I told my students it is easiest to write the number sentence first.  We then decided that writing the story would be the next logical step before writing the question. Drawing the picture next would have been fine too. As for the drawing, we discussed how spending a lot of time drawing birds over and over again would not be a good use of our math time so we decided that it would be fine to use X's to represent the birds.

I then sent them off in pairs to work on their own problems. They were instructed to not use the problem we had come up with as a class. My students really enjoyed this activity. They are also enjoying working with their compass buddies. One thing that I have learned from this Capstone project so far has been that I was not giving my students enough time to work in pairs on math questions. It is so nice to be able to walk around and hear all of the math talk going on.

Their picture of the birds on the wire is great! 

Jump math

Anytime I have a professional day and get the chance to take a math workshop, I get energized. This past Monday, I got the chance to attend a JUMP math workshop. JUMP stands for Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigy. I think there is some misunderstanding out there about JUMP. It is not a remedial program, nor is it just a set of workbooks. It is so much more. What stands out for me is the amount of free resources for teachers. JUMP is a recognized charity and as such gives away a lot of resources to teachers. The teacher guides are all free to download as well as unit tests and blackline masters. All that needs to be purchased in yearly workbooks for students. These are $7 each and each year has two different books.

 It re-affirmed a lot of what I believe about Math. Like Literacy, I feel there needs to be a balance. Swing too far one way and you run the risk of losing a certain percentage of your students. JUMP, to me, seems to strike a balance between Discovery math learning and Back to the Basics math. It has just enough manipulatives and hands-on learning to get kids interested but it also provides that much needed practice. Students needs repetition. You will see this as a theme on my blog. Don't just do a lesson once, repeat it. Change the numbers but keep the task or idea the same. students LOVE to feel a sense of mastery.

One part that I was impressed with was the confidence building units. These are designed in a way to make students feel successful and feel like they have mastered a math task they may have felt unattainable before. JUMP math is designed with a focus on scaffolding instruction. By moving slowly and step by step towards an end goal, students feel a lot of success. You can download one of the confidence building units here.

I am looking forward to trying some of it out in my classroom!

Reasoning Puzzles

As part of my work on math Literacy, I am aiming to have my students work together more in partners or groups of three. Hopefully, this will facilitate more Math Talk. This week we worked on Reasoning Puzzles. I found these fantastic puzzles here at Teachers Pay Teachers.  I originally found them through her fantastic blog- Beyond Traditional Math.  (Take a look around her blog, you wont be disappointed!) It was great to be able to walk around the room and hear all the talk going on. "What is a digit?", "Which one is the hundreds box?" and  "How come you are putting that one there?" are just a few of the questions I heard.

The students were given two sheets, one that just said True/False and then the other with an equation with empty boxes in it and then facts down below. Together with their partners they had to figure out what numbers went in the boxes and then read the facts below. They cut up the facts and placed them in the appropriate columns.

 One thing that became apparent to me was that I had not left enough time for a debrief at the end of the lesson. i am going to include that in next time. Over my years of teaching, I have become a firm firm believer in repeating similar style lessons or activities. The first time that you introduce a new idea, it is foreign to students, the language may be new and how to approach the activity will be intimidating to them. I plan to spend a few days per month working on these puzzles together with our compass buddies.  Some students were puzzled by some of the statements and had a hard time deciding which ones were true or false. Others seemed to approach very methodically and used a process of elimination.

Next time, I think I will just give them one set of sheets between them. this first time, I gave each person their own sets of facts and true/false sheets. This was a good way for everyone to start out knowing how to cut up the pieces and place them in the two columns. Hopefully on the second time with there just being one sheet between them, it will encourage even more talk.