“Number of the Day” Sheets: Choosing the Number January 5, 2015

I recently received an email from Stephanie, a grade 2 teacher in Newfoundland, inquiring about choosing the number for the Number of the Day sheets:

“I really love the Number of the Day sheets you have produced and the opportunities for differentiating the instruction. Just wondering how you set this up? Do children do this everyday or on designated days? How do you decide on the number for the day?”

I thought others might be asking this same question, so have decided to post an edited version of my response to Stephanie’s question:

As for setting up the Number of the Day sheets, things are really flexible. There is no one right way — you want what works best for your students and your time constraints. That being said, I have found that if you are able to have the kids do them really regularly (daily if possible) over a good number of weeks, the students are able to really get into the meat of them. By sharing about them after they have worked them, students get to hear what others have tried and will often stretch themselves to try to match what others are doing. They have a chance to really play and explore the number relationships that are brought out in the sheets’ activities.

The number can be picked in a variety of ways — everything from you choosing, a student choosing, drawing a number from a jar or dropping a bean on a 100 chart! Sometime I have chosen specific “repeats” (e.g., every number that week has a 9 in one’s place) sot the kids to see and compare what happens in such cases. What is the same as before? What is different? Or I might pick several numbers within a “decade” (e.g., 33, 37, 31, 35, 38) and again have students compare/contrast over those days.

No matter what number is chosen, one question that is really great to ask is “What do/did you notice?” When that is asked often in the math classroom, students get in the habit of paying attention to details, looking for patterns, making comparisons, and such.

I am happy with random numbers, too, but sometimes choosing numbers with a particular relationship is good so you can really draw out the depth of the relationship.

I hope you will try the Number of the Day sheet(s) with your students. More information about the sheets as well as the downloadable versions, can be found in the links below.

Mathematically yours,

Carollee

Number of the Day Sheets to Download:

Level 1 (English and French)

Level 2  (English and French)

Level 3 (English and French)  (pictured above)