If you read my blog, you'll know that I love Number Talks. They are one of the best ways I know to help the children in your class develop number sense and confidence in talking about their mathematical reasoning. 

Once you start Number Talks with your class and establish them as part of your routine, you will find them easy and love them as well - I promise! But adding anything into a classroom routine is always a challenge, I know. 

As I've taught in different stages, I've made posters illustrating the  mental math strategies that children often use when solving addition equations during Number Talks. Since I posted the Early Years Number Talk starter pack, I thought some people might find these Posters useful. They also provide visual support for children (and possibly for teachers as well!) as a classroom Number Talk routine is being established. 

If you click on the links above, they will take you to Teachers Pay Teachers, where you can download the posters for FREE. I'm planning to slowly migrate some of the resources I offer to Teachers Pay Teachers. One thing I like about having my free resources on Teachers Pay Teachers is that they track how many times files are downloaded...something my current blog website doesn't seem to have the capacity to do. This will let me know which resources people find particularly useful and which resources maybe aren't so popular. 

I also have 2 daughters getting ready to leave for university in the fall, so I may be adding some paid resources in the future, as we try to cover their expenses for the next few years! But I'll keep offering lots of FREE things as well (I know how carefully teachers often need to budget....). 

Here in Scotland, we still have about 6 weeks left of the school year. It will be a bit longer in the rest of the UK, while many schools in the States have either finished for the year, or have only a few weeks left (I'm jealous!). 

We are doing a bit of data handling at the moment in maths. My class is finding that a bit more engaging, which we need, now that warmer weather and sunny days appear to have arrived (I hope I haven't jinxed us by writing that...). 

Throughout the year, our class has been raising awareness of reading in our school as part of the First Minister's Reading Challenge, and one of our goals has been to raise money to add books to all of the ​

class libraries. It's much easier to have productive 'Personal Reading' time in classes if there is a wider range of books in each class to choose from.

So, using the theme of adding books to class libraries, I created a Data Handling project for my class. As I have a P4/5 composite this year, I've made 2 differentiated versions of it. The P4 version (available if you click on the picture above) works with numbers to 1000 (although most of the sums are within 200, and larger addition and subtraction problems generally use round numbers). 

The P5 version (available if you click on the picture below) works with numbers to 15,000 (and I've modified the project so the class is finding out how many books schools are adding to their school libraries, since the numbers are much bigger). 

Both versions are primarily addition and subtraction based, although some multiplication and place value knowledge is reviewed as well. They both also come with Answer Keys, for ease of marking. 

In using this with my class, I've printed it off as a booklet, which has worked well. The project file is done in colour, but you can easily print it off in black and white - that's what I do. 

I hope this saves a few people some time and keeps your class entertained as we count down to summer!

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