Number Talks: New Beginning
February 1, 2017 A new semester brings about new methods students. Although preservice teachers (PST) are new to this class, old mind sets are not so new especially with mathematics. Therefore, it's my goal to change ones mindset to challenge PST belief about mathematics. The following series of blogs, like before, are based on utilizing Number Talks (NT) in this methods course. The following post is our first conversation with a couple of related dot images: Teacher: How many did you see? (All said 8) Teacher: How did you see it? Student 1: Top 4 and Bottom 4- 4 +4=8 Student 2: Counting by 2 vertically 2, 4, 6, 8 Student 3: Counted by 1’s Comments I purposefully included how they saw it. I wanted my students to be really specific to emphasize that mathematics can be solve in a variety of ways and still will yield the same total. Teacher: How many did you see? (all said 7). How did you see it? Student 4: The other was 8 so I took away 1 and