Suzanne at the Math Forum

I’m running some online courses right now designed to help teachers make the most of the Problems of the Week and one theme that has emerged is –> students working individually vs. students working in pairs vs. students working in groups.

Some comments have been made about one student doing all the work or the social conversations that happen when pairs or groups are used. I find myself commenting that I’ve become more and more convinced that if you start your problem solving with Noticing/Wondering, those issues are minimized. And, I think this is true whether the problem solving is with a Math Forum PoW or a prompt in your curriculum or just a problem solving activity you’ve devised.

I’ve thought for some time that some behavior management issues are caused because students are not comfortable with the task. If it’s too easy, they’re bored and they act out to entertain themselves or turn to socializing because they think they’re “done.” If it’s too hard, they give up and in frustration they act out or socialize to get away from the unpleasant situation. And there are always those few students for whom the task is just right and they stay on task! Using a problem solving prompt with the question removed and doing a Noticing/Wondering activity creates a task that all students can do and moving from that (or during that activity) into pairs or groups is reasonable.

What type(s) of work do you have your students do?

• individual
• pairs
• pairs when they turn and talk
• pairs when they talk and then turn and work individually
• pairs to groups of four
• groups of four

Is there value in mixing the order? Do you mix the types of work within a class period?

At the Math Forum we’re just starting to work with a videographer at Drexel to help us capture some of the practices we use with students learning to be better problem solvers and communicators. Recently Mr. Reo and his fifth grade students welcomed us into their classroom. Wooden Legs was the Problem of the Week that I introduced to his students. In preparing for the session I had these goals in mind:

* use the Scenario as a “story”
* start with a read aloud (with no visuals either projected or on student handsouts)
* ask students “What did you hear?”
* as students respond, try my hardest not to REPEAT their words

Those were the initial goals that I think the video clip linked here may demonstrate. I had other goals as the lesson unfolded but I’ll save those if/when I have other video clips to share.

You’ll notice that I said “… starting to work …” and one thing we discovered is that the audio of the students’ voices is not up to our standards. We have plans to tape again, however, for this discussion — trying to show what it might look like if a teacher doesn’t repeat students’ responses — I think the fact that you can’t quite make out what each student is saying, is “okay” (not great but not dreadful). And, you’ll notice there are some subtitles to help with the audio of the students.

Why do I think this is an important goal?

As I mentioned in another blog entry I’ve thought a lot lately about how our students are to develop the CCSS Mathematical Practices. If students are to “Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.” we need to help them own their own learning. When the teacher repeats the student’s response and/or restates the student’s response, the focus is back to the teacher and relieves the student of holding on and owning those thoughts.

Here’s the video clip:

Wooden Legs Video 1: What Did They Hear?

What do you notice?
What do you wonder?
Do you see any slip-ups from me?
When you have whole class sessions like this, do you find yourself repeating what students respond?
Have you tried not to repeat? If, yes, how was it different? Did it change any of your classroom dynamics?

Learning to speak a language has intrigued me since my own sons were born and then continued to be something that I observed, reflected, and questioned when we lived in Germany and then Spain when our sons were young.

When our sons were infants my husband and I audio taped their sounds. Later when they were older we listened to those tapes and we were fascinated to hear language development! When you’re so close to an infant you don’t hear as much but if you can put yourself in a situation where you can objectively listen and it’s amazing what you hear.

In Germany and Spain I worked as a conversational English instructor at Berlitz School of Languages and it was that training that convinced me that the underlying motivation for learning to speak a language is the need to communicate. The more I could create a real need for communication the more a student would try to find the word to explain their thoughts.

Have you experienced trying to communicate an idea to someone whose first language is not English? If you really need to have them understand, you phrase the ideas you’re trying to express in different ways if the first way meets a blank stare. As they ask you questions, you respond. You ask/answer/ask/answer until you have communicated what you need them to understand. It’s not one way — it’s an exchange.

Mathematics is a language. We have to establish environments in which students feel a need to communicate. How do we create the need?

When you are communicating with someone and you don’t quite understand what they mean, you ask questions.

* I’m not sure I understand.
* How does that work?
* Why did you use “(insert a word)” – can you tell me what that means?
* Why did you say that?
* Can you tell me more?

I wonder how they might be communicating?

What happens when you think of your students as communicators?

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that students have difficulty writing explanations of their thinking. A recent experience strongly reminded me that this is indeed the case. Here’s what happened:

1. I presented a Problem of the Week to a 5th grade class of students using the Math Forum’s Noticing and Wondering activity from our Understanding the Problem strategy.

2. I read the Wooden Legs scenario to them and asked, “What did you hear?” They responded with a variety of noticings.

3. I read it again and they confirmed some of their noticings and added more. I was pleased with their responses — all was moving along well.

4. We moved to the “What are you wondering” part and although they didn’t generate a question that we might want to switch in for the original problem question, the conversations still added to having all of the students understand what was happening in the problem.

5. Next the class was given the full problem (not just the Scenario) and manipulatives and they worked in groups to solve. They were all actively talking about the math. They were definitely engaged. Annie and I both asked groups Why? How? and Tell Me More? questions and we were encouraged by the students’ responses. We saw students in each group making notes in their math journals.

6. The next step was that we showed some students how to submit to the PoWs online.

It was what I saw later online that reinforced the fact that having students write what they did and why they did it … or … just write their answer and show how that answer works is difficult! I responded to each of the fifth graders who submitted online and when their teacher asked me if I had anything to suggest to him or his students, I told him:

It’s perfectly normal but it seems that none of the students are comprehending what I’ve written to them. It could be because:

* they don’t understand what I’ve written
* they don’t “stick on” my message long enough to read it and so they don’t comprehend (VERY normal!)
* they might read it but by the time they get to their submission they’ve forgotten what I said (VERY normal!)

…. so …. if there is a way that you can have them “talk” about what I’ve written to them, that might help. Here are some possibilities:

* ask a student if they mind having the class look at their solution and my response together — in other words, maybe the class can read everything, think about it and then that one student will submit a revision (with their suggestions)

* have students work in pairs on just one of the student’s submissions — once they read, talk about, and revise one student’s submission then they do the other student’s

* have a student log in, read my message, go to their group, report what I wrote and talk about what it might mean. Once the student has talked about it then they return to revise.

The bottom line is that you have to create steps to get students into the process and then you have to create scaffolding for them so that they have some success to build on. Students who do not have strong literacy skills require a lot of scaffolding and patience but the results are worth it!