North School Maths - Maths Talk Part 2

Part two of Student Talk, building strong habits - Pete Scott

Launch early

It’s funny what stays in your head after a day of professional learning. I can’t recall who said it or what I was learning about, but this stayed with me…. ‘Launch early’.

My understanding of this is if you always wait until things are perfect before you share them, you will always be trying to make them perfect, and you’ll never share. Reflecting, this is true of myself. Always trialing but in doing so uncovering more problems to fix, and in turn, a reluctant sharer (a habit I continually push myself to do). “Launch Early’ was the mantra of my classroom. Get feedback early so you can progress faster. If you wait until you can already do something before you share, it will be slower than if you took the chance vocalise or showcase your thinking and learn from the experience.

This Blog post is an invitation to view some work that has been launched….

In my last post, I wondered about the uncertainties my students had when entering maths discussions and the following became my focus:

· Giving students a reason to get involved (progress in learning and improved understanding).

· Improving participation quality - not just watching, but actively listening and thinking critically.

Wondering: How can a student display initiative, organisational and problem-solving skills all day, except for during a maths session? This is a direct rip off from a reference Guy Claxton made about why kids are great learners except during the hours of 9 – 3:30.

Where to start? And more importantly, how to start?

Guy Claxton speaks of ‘gently infiltrating the linguistics of the classroom’. Let the infiltration begin….

Math Talk cards

During a professional development session with Edpartnerships International, a short clip was shown of students involved in a maths activity. I became a little fixated at the sentence stems the students were using to speak to each other; empowering the students to take part in the discussion. Linking this with the success we’ve had with Matt Sexton’s ‘talk move’ cards with staff to orchestrate discussions, we created a series of cards to help students.

Examples of talk cards

Light blue – used when you are unsure with an emphasis on being an active participant by giving the person ownership of the part that they didn’t understand, not a blanket response ‘I didn’t get it’.

Green – used when wanting to respectfully challenge with an emphasis on either the challenger or the presenter to provide evidence.

Purple – the beginning of a sentence stem that signals to the group that this person is still trialing something and to flag that the feedback should take this into account. Hopefully inviting a sense of ‘play’ and freedom to explore.

Context: A typical maths lesson for us:

· engage with a warmup such as a game, problem string or revision challenge problem

· launch our main exploring task with sharing and discussion points within this time

· launch the consolidating problem

· finish with a reflection / review of the session

Students have multiple opportunities throughout the lesson to share and be part of partnered, small group and whole group discussions where they can collaborate, share, challenge, or clarify ideas and thinking.

Giving students a reason to get involved in discussions

Through conversations and observations of my senior students, they seem to fit onto a sliding scale.

Never want to share.

Sort of understand and will remain quiet.

Will share if they have been ‘warmed up’

Understand and will share if you directly ask them but won’t enter on their own accord.

Sort of understand and will be active.

Always want to share no matter what.

Why should I enter a conversation if I understand?

I launched the talk move cards with the initial focus on this middle tier of students who in their words ‘Sort of got it, but sort of didn’t get it.’ Perhaps having a surface level method but didn’t have the depth to apply it or reason how it worked. These students indicated that they didn’t see the point of taking a risk in participating in a conversation. Why stick your head up when you think you’re doing ok?

They indicated that they knew they should ask questions and wanted to participate but found it difficult to know what to say or ask. Especially when they wanted to know a particular step that was shown.

Some said they preferred to listen to other explanations and thought other students could do it better. Relating this to my own experiences during professional learning days both face-to-face and remotely, I understand the feeling. You feel a desire to participate and share but the ideas haven’t quite formed yet or you aren’t quite sure if you are on the right track, yet you feel the pressure of thinking of something say….

What we did

Made participating in the discussion our success indicator; building the habit of participating whether they understand or not. Eliminating the invisible barrier of only students sharing if they understand and have the answer or they are completely lost and need help. With the new focus on empowering all students to participate in the discussion by asking questions that dig deeper, restate what they hear and see to make sense of it doing it the same way or sharing their own strategy and comparing.

What we found

More students began participating in our discussions. My typically quieter students were entering the conversation and letting their voice be heard. To clarify, I was still using the tools to orchestrate discussions, picking examples to showcase etc, but these students were actively putting their hand up and using the phrases to make sure they understood what was happening. ‘Thanks for sharing, could you please show me how you did the first part again’ Restating became a normal part of the chat. Sentence stems like ‘So what you’re saying is… ‘and ‘Can I just restate what you said so I understand better’ have provided a scaffold for entering the conversation. This has led to richer discussions with the class delving deeper by asking why and how. Why did you do that? How did you know that would work? Why did you write that number down when it says something different?

In summary, the addition of the structured sentence stems enhanced the mathematics in my classroom. There were times during our sharing where I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as my students led the discussion with a mixture of clarifying questions, restating and additional examples. I believe the dedicated teaching time to unpack and reflect on these skills was crucial to the success.

Part 3 of this series, I will share some ideas and tools used to assist with goal setting and self-assessment.