Ohio Journal of School Mathematics | Issue: Issue: 1(81) Spring 2019 (2019)

Volume 81 • 2019 • Spring 2019

Two papers this issue take up Number Talks, the short classroom routine where students solve a problem mentally and then explain how. Biro and Dick pair the talks with anchor charts so that early-elementary students have something to point to as they learn to put their reasoning into words. Lustgarten and Matney try the same routine on secondary preservice teachers and measure the result; after a few weeks the teachers reach for noticeably more strategies on a mental-mathematics problem, and nearly all of them say they would use the routine themselves.

The rest of the issue looks for mathematics in places that don’t resemble a worksheet. Chioda and Killian fold paper Danish Christmas hearts and use the symmetries that appear as a way into ethnomathematical inquiry. Borodkin, Martin, Roy, and Stapleton get kindergartners practicing counting and cardinality by feeding a math monster. Scanga and Walker bring back Lajos Pósa’s exploratory Hungarian method from a workshop abroad, and Nurnberger-Haag and her co-authors ask a question most of us never think to ask, which is what the walls of the room are actually saying about mathematics.