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Number Talks are a wonderful way to see where our students are with their mathematical thinking. As a part of a daily routine, a Number Talk promotes number sense and mathematical reasoning. In this post, I revisit what a Number Talk can reveal about our students' understanding of mathematics, and how they might be used to promote a fresh perspective. In addition, I examine a success criteria for Number Talks that is more expansive and recognises their true power.

"Number Talks" is an approach to the teaching and learning of Number Sense. Rather than relying on the rote-memorisation of isolated number facts achieved through drills of "table-facts", Number Talks aim to build confident, number fluency, where learners recognise patterns within and between numbers and understand the properties of numbers and operations. Number Talks are a "mind on" learning task that engages students in an active learning process as they search for patterns, decompose and recompose numbers and develop a flexible understanding.

Having the right mindset is alone not sufficient for growth. I might talk the talk about a growth mindset and believe I can learn a new skill but unless I back that belief with action, it is just talk.

A non-profit dedicated to bringing "Ideas Worth Sharing" to the world, TED offers some of the best and brightest sharing their perspectives on technology, entertainment, and design. Many of those who speak at TED discuss topics relevant to education. The following talks include thoughts on creativity, play, technology, the future of entire countries through their children, projects to nurture learning in at-risk students, and much more. Educators from all backgrounds will find something of value from these incredible TED talks.

Talk for writing is a method to improve children's writing developed by Pie Corbett.

The book 'Non Obvious' by Rohit Bhargava present an intriguing exploration of how careful observation and thought can reveal emerging trends and as the subtitle suggest 'predict the future'. For educators the ability to identify the trends which will deliver the best outcomes for our students from the noise of fads is alluring. While the talk of new technologies, of learner centric pedagogies and teaching for lifelong learning play the part of the obvious trends in education identifying the non-obvious trend is a more challenging endeavour. 

review of SWSX and 30 tools for startups

talk like a pirate glossary

With so much talk in education about differentiation and closing the achievement gap there has been a topic that has not gotten as much attention as I think it should. That topic is Gender Brain Difference and its impact on instruction in the classroom.

online collection of animated talking picture books

A writer/educator talks about the difference between worthless frivolity and productive fun in teaching writing, using an example from World of Warcraft

We send our students many messages about learning, growth, ability, potential. . . Sometimes we are sending these messages deliberately, such as when we talk about growth mindset and the rewards of effort, persistence and risk taking. At other times the messages we send are accidental, incidental and unplanned; these are often the strongest messages we send. 

Despite this being a 'thinking' conference, despite us all being advocates for structured and scaffolded models of thinking, not one group had applied any thinking routines, utilised a collaborative planning protocol or talked about applying an inquiry model or design thinking cycle. It wasn't that we didn't know about them. It wasn't that we don't know how to use them. It wasn't that we don't value them. We had all the knowledge we could desire on the how to and the why of a broad set of thinking tools and anyone of these would have enhanced the process, but we did not use any of them. Why was this the case and what does this reveal about our teaching of these methods to our students?

I have just had the opportunity to spend the weekend learning alongside a large group of mathematics teachers. After a day and a half of talking and thinking about mathematics teaching, I am excited to get back to school and try out some new ideas. There were also some key takeaways for me that I share below. These are the questions or wonderings that my mind wandered to while listening to the numerous talented speakers over the past two days.

article on how we can teach students to think

Companies which have recruited our students .. Dr. Vijiyan Vice Chancellor, Marine University. Delivering his talk in the alumni meeting on 25/12/2011 We are firm in our commitment to the noble cause of Quality Technical Education in Our Country. We scrupuluously mobilize our resources and train our students to be competent and confident in a complex and a competitive world.

Density is not typically an easy concept for most middle school students and even more difficult for younger students, but it doesn't need to be. This blog explains how I introduced density to my classes. My older students still talk about my suitcase and my vacation years after my class!

If we have to name a few fast growing industries of this era, we definitely can't miss out mass communication industry. Talking about its career options, they are truly exciting and you just can't resist yourself from falling in love with them.

We all have a story to tell, and so do your students! From your Kindergartener's weekend birthday party to your 12th grader's Senior Prom, your students want to talk and share. 21st century learning and the Common Core State Standards encourage today's students to move beyond basic telling and writing to recording, publishing, tweeting and blogging.