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Test scores, school report cards and Facebook posts complaining about homework problems often drive critiques of how math is taught in schools. Amid the debates, it has become increasingly clear that one ingredient is necessary for success: opportunities for students to talk about math. Unfortunately, these are often lacking in U.S. classrooms. We are both math education researchers. While we focus on different levels of the K-12 span, a common theme across our work is the role of talk in math classrooms - what talk can sound like, how talk impacts student learning, and how teachers can support math talk. Want to support your student's understanding of math? Talking will play a critical role. And a good place to start is to talk about math yourself.

"One of the most exciting trends in public libraries is how families and children are engaging together in playful early learning. Much of this has been influenced by Every Child Ready to Read, a program that guides families in children's early literacy by talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing. [1] There is less attention paid, however, to how libraries and families can support early math. This is unfortunate, given that early math skills are highly predictive of later academic success, even more so than reading abilities or socio-emotional development.[2] Like literacy, math is a tool, and one that can be developed and honed early in life.  Building on the success of Every Child Ready to Read, below we offer six ideas for how librarians and families can talk, sing, read, write, and play with math. Libraries are in a perfect position to promote family math, as they increasingly offer opportunities for families to tinker with science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); offer a wide range of digital media resources-many with a math focus; and are trusted places where families of young children congregate for story times and other activities.[3] "

"Close your eyes and picture the most recent math class you taught. Who is doing the math? Who is doing the talking? Who is doing the thinking? Three years ago, my answer would have been "me"-the teacher. My students were doing math, but I was probably telling them how to think and what to do most of the time. My big aha moment was being introduced to the research of Peter Liljedahl, a professor at Simon Fraser University. Liljedahl proposes three strategies that you can implement in order to create what he calls the thinking classroom: Start with good problems, use visibly random groups, and work regularly on vertical nonpermanent surfaces. I started using these three strategies in my math classes, and they have been an absolute game-changer. I can confidently say that my students now do most of the thinking and talking in my classroom."

"Catherine Good has experienced stereotype threat herself, although she didn't know it at the time. She started her academic career in pure math, expecting to get a Ph.D. But somewhere along the way she started to feel like it just wasn't for her, even though she was doing well in all her classes. Thinking that she'd just chosen the wrong application for her love of math, Good switched to math education, where she first encountered the idea of stereotype threat from a guest psychology speaker. "As he talked about students feeling that they don't really belong, I had an epiphany," Good said. She realized the discomfort she'd felt studying mathematics had nothing to do with her ability or qualifications and everything to do with a vague sense that she didn't belong in a field dominated by men. Stereotype threat is a term coined by psychologists Joshua Aronson and Claude Steele. They found that pervasive cultural stereotypes that marginalize groups, like "girls aren't good at math," create a threatening environment and affects academic achievement. Good was so fascinated by how powerful psychological forces can be on learning, including her own, that she switched fields again to study social psychology, and she ended up working closely with Carol Dweck for several years when Dweck's growth mindset work was in its early stages and not yet well-known among educators. Good now works at a psychology professor at Baruch College. Originally, Dweck and Good hypothesized that believing intelligence is flexible - what we now call a growth mindset - could protect students from stereotype threat, an inherently fixed idea."

"Helping children visualize math is critical to their success in the subject. I recently observed a 5th grade class starting a lesson on area and perimeter. I turned to a girl who was in my class four years earlier and reminded her that she knew the topic. "Yes I do!" she said excitedly. "The perimeter is where you sit along the outside of the rug in morning meeting, and area is the inside of the rug, where the squares are. That's from 1st grade," she said confidently, circling her fingers in the air to represent her thinking. Visual cues, like this one I use with my six- and seven-year-old students, stick and show that envisioning math helps children learn in lasting ways. We teachers can do more to give students internal ways to see the structure of mathematics-to understand types of units and what it means to move between them, and to pull apart and combine numbers. But math instruction is changing. At my school, in the early grades, we encourage children to use their fingers, something that feels so natural to them, to better understand numbers and the numbering system. We might talk about how a "high five" involves using a whole hand, which is really a unit made up of five fingers; while a thumbs-up involves just one segment of that five-part unit. We then go on to using things like beads on a string and, later, place-value disks, which are like poker chips, to help children see and work with numbers, units, and place value."

"Why It's Important to Talk Math With Kids"

""If you like the teacher, you'll 'get' maths more": Students talk about good mathematics teachers"

"What strategies are you planning for building number sense and problem-solving skills this year? Check out our Number Talks collection to see a daily, short, structured way for students to talk about math with their peers."

"We have found a range of resources, covering a variety of industries, where employers & employees talk about why maths really matters at work. Get in touch if you have examples to add - enquires@nationalnumeracy.org.uk. "

"One snowy January day, I asked a classroom of college students to tell me the first word that came to mind when they thought about mathematics. The top two words were "calculation" and "equation." When I asked a room of professional mathematicians the same question, neither of those words were mentioned; instead, they offered phrases like "critical thinking" and "problem-solving." This is unfortunately common. What professional mathematicians think of as mathematics is entirely different from what the general population thinks of as mathematics. When so many describe mathematics as synonymous with calculation, it's no wonder we hear "I hate math" so often. So I set out to solve this problem in a somewhat unconventional way. I decided to offer a class called "The Mathematics of Knitting" at my institution, Carthage College. In it, I chose to eliminate pencil, paper, calculator (gasp) and textbook from the classroom completely. Instead, we talked, used our hands, drew pictures and played with everything from beach balls to measuring tapes. For homework, we reflected by blogging. And of course, we knit."

"Math teachers of older students sometimes struggle to get students to explain their thinking with evidence. It's hard to get kids in the habit of talking about how they are thinking about a problem when they've had many years of instruction that focused on getting the "right answer." That's why educators are now trying to get students in the habit of explaining their thinking at a young age. The Teaching Channel captured kindergarten and first grade teachers pushing students to give evidence for their answers in situations where there are several ways to think about a problem."

"I was teaching a math class probably about 10 years ago, and I remember one of my top students (academically) goofing around and distracting others. I talked to her about her behaviour, and how although she understood the material, others were having issues and she was disturbing their work. During the same class, I remember one of my struggling students, who was often a distraction in class, doing extremely well on an assignment. I went on to praise the student for the effort and how well he worked on this particular assignment. After class, the "high flyer" in my math class came up to me and said something that has stuck to me for awhile."

"There is a lot of talk of "Computational Thinking" as a new imperative of education, so I wanted to address a few questions that keep coming up about it. What is it? Is it important? How does it relate to today's school subjects? Is Computer-Based Maths (CBM) a Computational Thinking curriculum? Firstly, I've got to say, I really like the term. To my mind, the overriding purpose of education is "to enrich life" (yours, your society's, not just in "riches" but in meaning) and different ways in which you can think about how you look at ideas, challenges and opportunities seems crucial to achieving that. Therefore using a term of the form "xxx Thinking" that cuts across boundaries but can support traditional school subjects (eg. History, English, Maths) and emphasises an approach to thinking is important to improving education."

"Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is effectively a set of 'complex disorders of brain development'. Most of us in education have dealt with students struggling with ASD and we know exactly what these students go through in their learning. But while ASD poses some learning challenges it should never be viewed as a crippling condition. Several ASD students, according to Autism Speaks, ' excel in visual skills, music, math and art'. As teachers, we need to work hard towards fighting the social stigma unfairly associated with ASD and the first place to start this fight is in classroom. There is a lot of misconception and misinformation surrounding ASD that should be unmasked to students.  To this end, we have curated for you a list of some great TED talks on autism you can watch with students in class.  You can also check these resources for apps and tools to use with autistic students."

I am a high school math teacher and technology and instructional coach.

Numbers, patterns and equations are at the core of these talks, which will teach you how to fold better origami and how to quantify history.