Number Talks &
Mathematical Practices
Todd Livingstone, Danny Jacobsmeyer, Randall Brown
Mar Vista Elementary School
PajaroValley Unified School District
Description of Practice
 In Number Talks, students gather in a centralized area on the
floor, a sequence of problems are given one at a time that are
intended to provide students with opportunities to discover
mathematical relationships within the sequence of problems.
 Students are taught common hand signals to communicate
their understanding which also aids with formative
assessments for the teacher.
 Students debate the solution, once agreed upon, various
strategies are shared and explained by the students.
 Students will make sense of mathematics, develop efficient
computation strategies, communicate mathematically, to
reason and prove solutions.
Links to Common Core Instructional Shifts
 The Shifts in Math
Focus strongly where the Standards focus.
2. Coherence: Think across grades, and link to major topics
within grades.
3. Rigor: In major topics pursue conceptual
understanding, procedural skill and fluency, and
application with equity intensity.
1.
 Number talks school wide addresses these shifts.
 Number talks also address many of the standards for
mathematical practices.
Links to Common Core Instructional Shifts
 Mathematical practices are eight overarching standards that
thread through all the grade levels and are not content
specific but more related to mathematical habits.
 Number talks address many of these standards for
mathematical practices.
 1 Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
 2 Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
 3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of
others.
 6 Attend to precision.
 7 Look for and make use of structure.
 8 Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
Impact on Students
Quotes from Mr. Jacobsmeyer’s Mar Vista 2012-2013 6th grade class:
 “It gave me a new way or a better way of approaching
problems by not using the algorithm.”
 “If you listened to your classmates explain their method,
them you could get more ideas for other problems.”
 “Say someone has a cool method, you could take various
approaches to make you own method.
 “Learning other methods and learning how others think, I
can use strategies to solve more complex problems through
breaking them down.”
Impact on Students
Tips on Implementation(Lessons Learned)
Tips for Teachers:
 Your are not teaching in the traditional sense, it’s more of a
Socratic process. Students are discovering and you are
guiding them through questions.
 Take time to build in the routine and structure.
 Give the process some time and intended results will follow
Tips for Administrators:
 Transition- go slow to go fast
 Will not look like a traditional math class.
 Support/materials (see following slide)
Resources & Tools for getting started
 Daniel Jacobsmeyer and Todd Livingstone at Mar Vista
 Daniel_Jacobsmeyer@pvusd.net
 Todd_Livingsotne@pvusd.net
 Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental math
and Computation Strategies by Sherry Parrish, Math
Solutions
 www.insidemath.org : keyword search Number Talks
 Monterey Bay Area Math Project
www.mbamp.ucsc.edu/