Jun 17

Jun 17 3rd grade math warmups - number talk

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What are your mathematical goals for you students? Let me share mine. i want my students to

love math and see value in it
thinking flexibly & creatively with numbers
be problem solvers

Do any of those match up with your goals? if so, you’re probably searching for a routine that will help get your students there. Through my math certification program, I began picking up, tweaking, and creating quick & fun routines that get kids thinking about math. Not only thinking, but also discussing.

And now I’m gonna share out favorite math warm-ups with you! ALL THIRTEEN OF THEM.

Here is a sneak peek of the schedule I follow for math warm-ups.

These are not worksheets, spiral review slides, or memorization based routines. These are quick, fun, easy warm-up routines that get students thinking and talking. And for most of them, you don’t need anything more than whiteboards or a whiteboard type app!

Our class uses the app Nearpod for math time. The beauty of Nearpod is I can pull resources right into the app, send it out to every student (without a student sign up!) and they can interact with the resources. When they interact with it, whatever they do comes right back to me.

I love to drop our math warm-ups into Nearpod as “draw-it” slides. Most of the routines start out asking kids to think mentally. But, I also want students to practice explaining their thinking through writing or images (or both!). Plus, when I ask students to interact on their screen and turn it in, I get automatic feedback and assessment. This allows me to have data to group and help my students with what they need.

But even if you don’t have or use Nearpod, these routines will definitely work for your classroom!

Today, we are going to start with the tried and true …

NUMBER TALK

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I obviously didn’t create or even perfect the number talk, but I believe in the power of it. We do a traditional number talk every Monday. We usually do an addition problem, subtraction problem, and multiplication string.

I always start a number talk with no resources/materials. Students set their iPads (or whiteboards) to the side. I present the problem and give them thinking time. They give me the signal (traditionally a thumb on chest) when they have a solution. They can give two thumbs if they have two ways to solve.

This is where our routine differs a bit. To get more input from all students, and prevent them from copying neighbors’ solutions, I have students record the solution they got on their iPad and hold it up. i start recording solutions on the board. I ask students if everybody’s solution is represented. You will usually have 4-5 different answers (depending on the time of year/how often you do number talks).

Then I have students share out their strategies. We name and add them to our chart if we feel they work. It is so important to get students talking about the strategies they used to reach a solution. It’s important that they test to see if it works, or if it needs to be revised. I have students share strategies that don’t work (and we revise them) and strategies that do work (and we add them!) .

The next step for our class, is to record our strategy! Students may record their own strategy, or try to record a strategy from someone else that they liked. For this, I have students use red for the solution and blue for their strategy. This helps assure that they won’t just put an answer and submit, and also helps me when looking through for observational data.

That is math warm-up ONE! I have seen an increase in my students’ excitement about math and a dramatic increase in their flexibility with number. If you’ve been thinking about starting out with number talks, START!