What Did You Learn?

WOW! Today was a jam packed day full of PD! I did a total of 9 presentations...CRAZY FUN! I always enjoy presenting to teachers. On Monday I got to attend a Kansas math conference and promised to come back and share what I learned. 

I don't want to share everything that I learned tonight because I am SUPER tired but I will share a fun idea!

One way to get students to begin looking at numbers and quantities is to use "number chat cards." A number chat card is a card that looks like this:

You would cut the card in half to make two separate number chat carts. The students will use the cards to begin to create math conversations. For example they will usually begin talking about what items they see. "I see apples, corn, and a pie." Then it might move to talking about the attributes these items have. "I see a red apple, that is round." Next the students will begin to notice the quantities of each of the items. "I see that there are 4 apples, 3 pieces of corn, and 2 pies." Students will then progress to comparing the quantities. "I see that there are more apples then corn because there are 4 apples and 3 pieces of corn." Once students seem to understand talking about these items then the teacher can guide them to begin talking about addition and subtraction with the cards. For example, If I add the apples and corn together I will have 7 items total. There are soo many different skills you can hit with these cards it is unbelievable! 

This weekend I am going to work on making some of these cards so be on the look out! TGIF tomorrow woohoo!