There are certain techniques to help students learn to carry out better conversations. What ever techniques a teacher decides to use, it is important that it include something for the other student to use to help respond with something other than yes or no.
I once participated in training to do improvisational theater. The biggest rule for improvisational is to never, never, never do anything to get a "no" because the no stops everything cold. One thing we did was a "Yes and......." where we said "Yes and..........." and filled in something so the other person could say yes and something. This could be used in math like this:
Student 1 - "I got the answer 14." Student 2 - "Yes I got that and I did it by adding 3 to both sides." Student 1 - "Yes I did that too and when I did it, I eliminated the constant" etc. This is not something you want to start out with.
One way to encourage this is to pass out partner discussion cards in which there is a starter prompt and a response prompt to get the full conversation going. These cards all have a starter question with a response prompt and are based more on general strategies rather such as "What strategy could you use to solve the problem?" and "I could have used......" or "How do you know your answer is reasonable?" I know it is reasonable because......."
Although there are several sites with cards ready for purchase, it isn't that difficult to surf the internet finding examples for you to make your own. If you want to make your own, remember to think about asking students to discuss strategies or give explanations so the discussion begins with a "What", "Why", or "How." Just remember that these cards fall into one of four categories. The first is "Making sense of problems and persevere" with questions such as "What strategy did you use?" or "How would you explain your strategy to others?".
The second is "Reason, Explain, and Critique" which asks things like "How did you get your answer?" or "How can you be sure your answer is right?". Next is "Reflect and connect" with questions like "What is the relationship between ________ and _________", or "What skills or concepts did you use?". Finally is the "Sentence Starters" such as "The strategy that makes the most sense to me is........" or "I was really surprised when........".
The nice thing about these partner discussion cards is that they can be used via distance learning through the use of breakout rooms or in math journals. This type of activity does not have to be used only in a regular class. Furthermore, why not have some of these questions on a Poster that is hung on the wall so students can easily look up and check for a conversation starter starter or response.
In regard to posters, I found this on the internet with some great suggestions for conversation starters and responses that go with four main areas. One is "Clarify the problem and ideas for solving it." which asks "What are we trying to do?" or "In future problems like this we need to remember to ......". Another is "Discuss representations and models" with questions like "How can we explain this to others?" or "Another way to show this is.........". Next is "Explain and support reasoning." asking "What does that mean?" or "In math we always need to ........". Last is "Use multiple methods of solving." with questions like "How can we solve it with symbols?" or "I think these two methods relate because......."
The poster with these questions can easily be printed out and hung on the wall where students can refer to it or check it out or make copies for every student so they can put it in their notebook to refer to during conversations. Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear. Have a great day.
No comments:
Post a Comment