Reply To: Lesson 9-5: Building Number Sense and Fluency – Discussion

[Amy Johnson]

My biggest takeaway from this course is to keep pushing boundaries in my instruction for math sense making. I started this leg of my math instruction journey in the Fall of 2019 at a professional development introducing me to the concept of math talks. I started using and playing with them in my classroom. Then 2020 and its’ trial came and I hit a hard pause. This summer I read a book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics which challenges my ideas of math instruction. I’ve tried some new things and need to revisit using math talks with these new ideas. Then I found your course and my take away is I can’t go back to to same old ways of instruction.

I’ve been being more intention about using models but I think I am “beating students” with them. This idea of emerging concepts and models is HUGE. I need to transition myself and so do my students. My final thoughts are I need eyes that “wonder and notice,” hands that record and model, and thoughts that reason and consolidate old ideas and new wonderings. This creates new understanding that I can communicate and share with others. If I can proceed in this way, I can work with students to think of math in this way. There is power in curiosity and creation and I need to infuse this into my instruction and ultimately in my students’ learning.