Week by Week in First

Lots of awesome things are happening in First Grade!  We have started doing number talks and I love them.  This is the first year I have done them and I am so impressed by the things they have come up with on their own. 

We started on the first day of school with number one and now we are on number 8.  All I say is show me a way to write the number ________.  They do all the rest of the work.  They have already come up with equations like 100-95= 5 and 10-15=5 (on the fifth day of first grade, WOW!).  They know that they can write numbers as ten frames, tally marks, with money, on a clock, number words, dots, etc. 

This will help them with their number sense and mental math.  It is huge what taking 10 minutes out of your day will do to help your students learn about numbers.  I plan on doing more number talks along the guidelines of the book, Number Talks

http://www.amazon.com/Number-Talks-Children-Computation-Strategies/dp/1935099116

as the year goes on.  I encourage you to try them and see how it goes.  I'm sure you will be impressed with the impact it has on your students and the different ways they look at problems.   

Check out these blogs for more information. 

http://oceansoffirstgradefun.blogspot.com/2011/09/number-talks.html

http://simplyfirstgradefun.blogspot.com/

http://firstgrademagic.blogspot.com/2011/11/number-talks.html

Have a great week in First Grade!

Nicole Berg