Each year, as a staff we work collaboratively to build and monitor our School Learning Plan (SLP). SLP design begins with a general area of focus provided by the District. Based on this focus area, we analyze our data, collect anecdotal evidence, and decide together how we will intentionalize our work.
This year we have established our School Learning Plan and are focusing our work with a Theory of Action Statement as follows:
If teachers regularly implement self verbalization strategies and a structure such as Number Talks, then students will effectively justify their use of strategies to efficiently solve operational problems.
Self Verbalization or Accountable Talk
The term "Accountable Talk" refers to talk that is meaningful, respectful and mutually beneficial to both speaker and listener. Accountable Talk stimulates higher-order thinking— helping students to learn, reflect on their learning, and communicate their knowledge and understanding. In short, the easiest way to think about this is, the person who is doing the talking is doing most of the learning.
Number Talks
“Number Talks” are a daily routine to develop conceptual understanding and efficiency with numbers, operations, and mathematics in about 10 minutes per day.
Why do Number Talks?
Number Talks help students develop their computational fluency and flexible thinking about numbers and operations.
“With Number Talks, students start to believe in themselves mathematically. They become more willing to persevere when solving complex problems. They become more confident when they realize that they have ideas worth listening to. And when students feel this way, the culture of a class can be transformed.” Making Number Talks Matter, 2015, p 93