Grades 3-5 — Numeracy Development Talks

Overview of Online Resources

Overview of Grades 3-5 NDT Resources

Numeracy Development Talk — Video

NDT Videos introduce basic representations, strategies, and concepts to small groups or classes of students. Then, these videos present a series of group Challenges that ask students to represent numbers and solve problems using a set of magnetic measurement bars on a whiteboard or using the online interactive Number Line Measurement Tool.

These videos structure the Numeracy Development Talks, allowing teachers to focus on facilitating mathematical discussions about diagrams, vocabulary, and concepts highlighted in the videos, and on developing questioning techniques that challenge students to explain and justify their strategies for building representations and solving problems.

Group Challenges built into the
Number Line Measurement Tool

Teachers can facilitate each group Challenge in a Numeracy Development Talk by clicking a link that preloads the Challenge into the interactive Number Line Measurement Tool. This online tool allows students to drag, drop, and snap bars to tick marks or other bars to measure, represent, and calculate on number lines.

Magnetic Measurement Bars for Whiteboards

Teachers can use a classroom whiteboard to facilitate most Numeracy Development Talks using the measurement bar kit from Essential Math Concepts. These foam magnetic manipulatives allow students to represent and calculate with whole numbers, fractions, and decimals.

Teachers can also download a printable set of measurement bars and adhere adhesive magnet strips to the back of each bar.

Video Overview and Instructional Notes

To support implementation, the Video Overview and Instructional Notes for specific pause points in the video address diagram comprehension, introduce math vocabulary in context, and flag essential strategies and concepts for the group to discuss.

In addition, this document suggests questioning and facilitation techniques for each group Challenge to encourage students to explain their strategies and justify their thinking.

Conceptual Overview

Teachers can review the Conceptual Overview for a Numeracy Development Talk to identify the essential math representations, strategies, and concepts introduced in each talk.

Professional Learning Video

Professional Learning Videos explore a progression of representations, strategies, and concepts in a series of Numeracy Development Talks. These PL Videos identify the connection between essential representation and strategies to demonstrate how measurement on number lines helps students to build an intuitive understanding of important procedures, such as generating equivalent fractions with common denominators and adding fractions with different denominators.

Numeracy Development Tasks

Numeracy Development Tasks provide ongoing practice and conceptual review that can be completed during an instructional transition in the school day. The task can be built on the whiteboard using the magnetic manipulative kit or displayed by clicking on a link to the Number Line Measurement Tool.

Practice Pages

Practice Pages can be assigned as additional practice or used to structure differentiated instruction for specific students. These pages challenge students to extend measurement bar strategies to paper-and-pencil problems.