Heather Voyer

MIAA 350
Reflection #4: Second Grade, Number Talk

One big push in our district lately has been number talks. Number talks are
structured short sessions where students do not have access to paper and pencil, but are
relying on their own brainpower to solve a problem. In many cases students are seated
on the floor away from their desks.
I observed a second grade teacher for a short number talk. The teacher had all her
students on the carpet next to the whiteboard. She was seated in a chair and had some
yellow cards that opened like a book. There were big black dots on the left side of the
card and big red dots on the right side. The teacher reminded the students they were
building ten frames to help them figure out how many dots there were altogether. Once
the students mentally came up with their answer, they would give thumbs up on their
chest letting the teacher know they had one strategy. If they had more than one strategy
to solve the problem, they could show thumbs up with their pointer finger extended.
The first card had nine black dots and four red dots. After giving the students
think time, the teacher began calling on students to share their answers. The first student
shared the number of black and red dots that were present on the card, then another
student shared how to create a sum to ten, which was 10+3=13 dots. Another student
shared another strategy: 7 + 6 = 13, which is the doubling minus one strategy we learned
in MIAA 350.
The next card the teacher showed revealed eight black dots and six red dots for a
total of fourteen dots. The first student shared the sums to ten strategy, 10 + 4 = 14.
Another student shared the doubling strategy, 7 + 7 = 14. On the final card the teacher
showed the students used the same two strategies, sums to ten and doubling.