I first introduced number talks to my school a little over a year ago. With a few professional developments and resources, slowly they have expanded throughout our school. It is powerful to see students fluently solve problems with conceptual understanding, while using numbers flexibly and creatively.

Our guiding resource is Number Talks, by Sherry Parrish. I love this book and highly recommend it as a good starting point. It does a great job with developing understanding with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers. Where the book falls short, is extending number talks into money, time, fractions, decimals, estimation, and patterns. Many of these ideas are picked up in the mini-lesson books found in Cathy Fosnot’s Context for Learning series.

Here are a few additional ideas:

Decompose a while number
The number 10 is composed of _____? (5 and 5, 2 and 8, 2 and 2 and 6,…)

Decompose a fraction
The number 7 ninth is composed of _____? (2 ninths and 5 ninths, 2 thirds and 1 ninth,….)

Decompose money
I have 45 cents. What coins might I have? (4 dimes and 5 pennies, 1 quarter and 4 nickels, ….)

Decompose time
At went to the park to play for 45 minutes. What did I do and how long did each thing take? (slide for 10 minutes, soccer for 30 minutes, and swings for 5 minutes)

Decompose a number with a decimal
The number 2.45 is composed of ______? (2 and .45, 1.45 and 1, four halves and .45)

Making change – Subtraction with money
If a spent $17.45 on ice cream for my family, what might my change be?
(If paid with $20 change would be $2.55, if paid with $18.00 change would be $0.55, if paid with $17.50 change would be $0.05,….)
OR I spent $17.45 on ice cream and paid with a $20 bill. What might my change be? (2 dollar bills, two quarters, and a nickel, or 10 quarters and a nickel,…)

Adding or subtracting fractions
1/3 + 1/2 + 1/8 + 1/4 + 1/8 =

Adding or subtracting time
School started at 8:30 and ended at 2:45. How long were you at school?

There are so many more places to talk number talks. Please share other ideas.