I had the pleasure and privilege of leading a Number Talk / Math Talk with the TOSA team. I've had many experiences leading Number Talks with my students in first, second, and fifth grades. I've also led training workshops for teachers on how to plan, lead, and reflect on Number Talks. This time I led the Number Talk as if I was speaking to my students, cutting in and out of that when addressing the metacognitive reasons for parts of my Number Talk. Through the Number Talk, my colleagues effectively shared their mathematical thinking and the strategies for how they solved an addition problem with three 3-digit addends. A few members of the TOSA team noticed that I explicitly write down and label the strategies for each method (decomposing, near doubles, partial-sums, ...) and we engaged in a discussion about how that practice helps our students. By identifying the strategy and labeling it on the board next to the method(s), students receive continued exposure to academic language, deepen their understanding of the strategies, and increase the chance they will internalize the mathematical concepts and apply them in new situations and problems.
My closure for the Number Talk was asking my colleagues to share something they learned or re-learned. Barbara's comment highlights the value of Number Talks. Barbara, like any adult who experiences Number Talks for the first time(s) may have a few ways to solve a given problem, but through the process, they learn many more strategies and also the academic language for those strategies. "My new learning was decomposing."