By Sara Finegan
Last year I started a program I called “Nimble with Numbers.” Before each math lesson, and sometimes before we started reading and writing instruction, we’d do math problems. But we never used paper. We used language and our heads, and worked through them out loud.
It became one of my students’ favorite activities, and we continue it to this day.
Nimble with Numbers involves what I think of as math fluency – the ability to work with numbers in creative ways to get to an answer. Here’s an example of what we do:.
Using the document camera, I will write a couple of numbers – with no operation expressions. And I will ask out loud for an answer. This is what it looks like:
Me: (writing the numbers 36 and 72). What’s the difference between 36 and 72?
Students: Oh! Oh! Let me!
Me: Ok……..Brandon. Give it a whack.
Brandon: Well, 36 to 46 is ten. And 46 to 56 is another ten. 56 to 66 is ten.
Me: Ok, so how many do we have so far.
Brandon: Thirty. Ten and ten and ten.
Me: Ok.
Brandon: And 66 to 70 is …67, 68. 69….four.
Me: Four. Ok. So what do we have now?
Brandon: Thirty-four.
Me: Ok.
Brandon: And 70 to 72 is two more. So thirty six.
Me: So what is the answer?
Brandon: The difference between 36 and 72 is thirty six.
We do this with multiplication, addition, and subtraction, always using the proper vocabulary (difference, sum, product).
What I have discovered is that TALKING our way through math problems embeds the skills and opens up the synapses for math reasoning in a way that nothing else has in my classroom. The ability to explain our reasoning is an added benefit: the real gift for my kids has been the development of fluency in their approach to math problem-solving by moving to friendly numbers and taking things step by step.
Another example:
Me: Ok. How many legs do 456 elephants have? (Writing 456.)
Kids: Me! Oh me! Me! Me! Me!
Me: Hmmm. Mariana.
Mariana: Well, 456 is really four hundred plus fifty plus six.
Me: Uhuh.
Mariana: And an elephant has four legs.
Me: Yep.
Mariana: Four legs times 400 elephants is……….four times four is 16. So since it’s four times 400, we’re going to add two zeros to that number in the ones and tens places. So that’s 1600.
Me: Uhuh.
Mariana: Then, four times 50 is……well, four times five is 20. But 50 is five tens, not five ones. So it’s 200.
Me: Uhuh. What do we have so far?
Mariana: Sixteen hundred and two hundred is eighteen hundred.
Me: Ok.
Mariana: So four times six elephants is 24 elephants. So four hundred and twenty six elephants have eighteen hundred and twenty-four legs.
Me: Applause.
In a demanding classroom, the kids do the work. The teacher calls on people and facilitates.
demanding classroom · high expectations · learning disabled · math fluency · math language · Nimble with Numbers · rigor · rigorous instruction · Sara Finegan · special education · standards
