"Take-Aways" from Sandra Goff

The Friday before school started, I had the opportunity to listen to Sandra Goff speak about the mathematical practices, fluency, and much more. I have listed some "take-aways" from the presentation below.

• Mathematical practices are not optional...You need to be doing some of them everyday!
• If students know how to solve a problem they should be able to Model It!
• Math Tool Kits...tools are not only the manipulatives that we want our students to use, but they are strategies, such as a using a number line and base ten blocks, rounding, multiplication, and division. Students also need to know how and when to use the appropriate strategy, and they need to be given opportunities to select the tool they think they should use.
• Fluency: there are 3 parts of fluency- students must be able to use and understand fluency; if they don't know how to do it, you can't expect fluency

Ideas for Fluency:

1. Pocket Fact: Each student gets a fact (write a fact on a card); their job is to know that fact at anytime during the day; you can switch the cards the next day; ask the kids the fact throughout the day
2. Wear facts as your name of the day: students call each other the fact they have on the name tag instead of their name- Example: "2x2=4 will you play with me?"

Each week, I am going to focus on one mathematical practice. Check back on Tuesday for information on mathematical practice #1: Making Sense of Problems.