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Before Number Talks
After Number Talks
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Quantitative Data
Over the course of several weeks, my students took regularly scheduled quizzes based on the skills we were working on. We were engaging in Number Talks simultaneously with our districts curriculum. Number talks allowed my students to maintain above average progress. When students were taking these quizzes, I was able to take antecdotal notes on their attitudes and dispositions. My students were more confident in their problem solving ability, and were able to talk with me about numbers in a flexible and dynamic way that I have not witnessed previously.
Because Number Talks rely on collaboration, reasoning, critical thinking, and mental math, I wanted to see the growth of their math dispositions because of this process. Number Talks had a postive impact on the way my students view mental math.
My students thoughts and beliefs about mathematical relationships were positively affected by the use of Number Talks. My students became more comfortable in a community of learners, where collaboration, reflection, and respect were fostered through this learning process. On this journey, I also was able to take the role of student and learn along side these mathematicians.
In addition to our regularly scheduled quizzes, I gave my students a self created preassessment. This preassessment was designed to test students number sense, using different operations. My four students were not able to answer any of the preassessment questions correctly. However, during the Post Assessment, all four students were able to answer all of the questions successfully. Throughout my research, I did weekly checks for understanding using the same type of self designed assesment as my pretest. Even though my data was inconclusive, Number Talks had a positive impact on deepening my students number sense, and confidence during the time spent creating this math community.
I believe this data to be inconclusive due to the independent nature of these assessments. Several of these students struggle with reading comprehension, which is why I believe it was difficult to quantify their number sense through these assessments.
Qualitative Data
Number Sense in Action
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