“The math board taps into every child’s innate sense of number and provides daily experiences to develop and nourish number sense and facilitate students’ application of number sense in a variety of situations and contexts.”


Whitesville’s Elementary Math Meeting Board By Tessa Levitt, Whitesville Central School and CA BOCES


Each day, math class at Whitesville Central School begins with a Math Meeting Board in grades PK – 4th grade. The math board is used to build number sense through daily routines and activities. The math board taps into every child’s innate sense of number and provides daily experiences to develop and nourish number sense and facilitate students’ application of number sense in a variety of situations and contexts. The students count, do calendar activities, graph data, collect data over time, count money, create time lines, use time daily and most importantly talk and discuss how numbers are used in many different ways and contexts. .


The roll out of the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics has put a huge emphasis on the importance of Numbers and Operations. The focus is due to the research that states; “number sense is complex, there are many layers to it


www.caboces.org/iss


and it’s rooted within all strands of mathematical concepts.” Students who struggle in math, often lack number sense and operations.


Whitesville Central School has seen great success in using the math meeting board over the last school year. Kids are excited about using math and discuss all the ways to solve mathematical problems. One teacher stated, “by the end of the year, the kids could facilitate the math board routine on their own.” Another teacher said, “Math Board time is the student’s favorite time of the day.” The Math Meeting Board has been much more than just a daily “warm up.” The students are learning from each other and building a strong community of learners through math talk, problem solving and a deep sense of numbers and operations!


SUCCESSSTORIES December 2011


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8