Student Discourse

Today I attended a professional development workshop for a State Wide project called Algebra For All. During the workshop we did a lot of discussion about what classroom discourse should look like in order to be effective. The Algebra For All focus for this year is for teachers to implement a "Math Talk Community". We discussed four components of Math Talk that came from an article called "Math Talk Community" by K. Huffered-Ackles et. al. in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education dated 2004 Volume 35. The four components were Questioning, Explaining Mathematical Thinking, Source of Mathematical Ideas, and Responsibility for Learning. Immediately I started to think about the session on discourse that I attended at the Carnegie National Math Institute this summer.

I soon realized that the ideas we were talking about need to be a natural part of a Carnegie Classroom. Students should be explaining their mathematical thinking, be a source of mathematical ideas, both the students and I should be asking questions, and we're both responsible for their learning. While I thought I was doing a decent job at this (there is always room for improvement) I realized today that I was leaving out an important piece.

Part of sharing the responsibility for learning should be students evaluating themselves and others. Now I don't mean that students should be grading each others tests, but that they should be evaluating ideas for reasonableness without my help. I've never thought of this before. However, if I'm always the one saying if the answer is correct than I'm still the knowledge keeper instead of a true facilitator.

This week my students will be completing 1.8 and 1.9 from the Algebra 1 text. Since the lessons are very similar I usually have half of the groups do 1.8 and the other half do 1.9. Each group makes a poster to summarize their project that includes the graph, table, equation, and a few other examples from their problem. Students usually present their posters and I grade them on both the presentation and the poster.

After today's professional development I've decided that students will do a gallery walk where they will write comments on sticky notes and place them on the posters of other groups. Students will have to decide what they like about the other posters and include any questions they have for the group. Then when each group presents their poster I want them to answer the questions that the other students had for them as part of their presentation. This will give students a chance to reflect on their own learning and give them a chance to question others ideas.