Jamar Moore

Dr. Barbara Martin

CIED 441: Math Methods

December 1, 2023

Math Enrichment Reflection

The Math Enrichment project has been a valuable learning experience for my future

teaching experience in an elementary classroom. The importance of using academic language

and general terms when explaining math concepts to students was an excellent way of helping

students to succeed in problems. During my visits to Ellis Elementary, I played various games

with students that included math concepts of rounding, addition, and subtraction. However,

before I started playing these math games with the students, I implemented number talks.

Number talks are important to conduct before starting a lesson, as they will set the tone for the

lesson and provide an outlook of what they know about the math concepts. According to Van De

Walle “The point of number talks is the talk. The teacher facilitates the discussion asking

questions to hear how students thought about the problems, seeking strategies and focusing

students’ attention on the possible ways to solve the problems” (Van De Walle, 2018, p. 67).

After I did number talks with the students it helped with the math game from start to finish.

During my first visit, the first math game involved rounding multi-digit numbers, which had

some concepts of place value included. The student struggled with rounding and verbally saying

multi-digit numbers, however, I introduced some strategies to help get through some of the

problems, such as a number line. This helped the student visually see where a specific number

lies on a number line and where the number is in range compared to other numbers. After the
introduction of a number line, the student began verbally explaining his strategy of rounding

multi-digit numbers. Furthermore, I reminded the student of another strategy for rounding by

saying “Move next door, is it five or more.” These instructional strategies were hugely beneficial

to the students as they were successful at the end of the game. My second visit to Ellis

Elementary involved an addition and subtraction game with a student. This student struggled

with these math concepts, however, with the introduction of a number line the game greatly

progressed. Often the student struggled with problems that involved adding and subtracting

higher numbers, for example, nine plus eight or eleven minus 9. The number line helped the

student count up and down, which helped the student better understand how addition and

subtraction are properly executed. Some problems that student understood immediately was

adding and subtracting doubles. During my final visit to Ellis Elementary, I played a

measurement game with two other students. The game consisted of measuring six different items

on the game board and matching them with the correct measurement on the left-hand side of the

file folder. These two students did not how to properly use a ruler to measure objects, however,

they have not worked on this concept in the classroom yet. The students did not immediately

grasp the difference between inches and centimeters, which was understandable, and did not

understand how to start at zero or at the beginning of an object when measuring. Ultimately, I

used guided instruction by showing them where to place the ruler, how to properly line the object

up with the ruler, and the correct measurement term that was given in the math game. After this

guided instruction, the two students somewhat understood the method of measurement. My

biggest takeaway from this valuable experience is that academic language is very important

when explaining math concepts to students. Also, using differentiation was very important

because some students were at different readiness levels in mathematics.