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.