Friday, October 21, 2022

Meaningful Mathematical Discourse


When we take the time to engage in meaningful conversations (productive dialogue) about our math experiences and encourage students to participate, we're nurturing a supportive culture of questioning, reflection, and understanding. 

One of the key factors in math achievement involves supporting math language development. This includes asking critical questions, encouraging students to seek clarity, and accepting our failures as opportunities for real growth. In doing this, we're motivating and encouraging students to work together to facilitate productive mathematical conversations. Engaging in meaningful mathematical discourse offers students an opportunity to reflect on their math knowledge and understanding, make connections with prior knowledge, identify patterns, hone in on their reasoning skills, and develop their higher-order thinking skills. As teachers, it allows us to observe and evaluate their mathematical understanding and development so that we can better support their math growth as we address gaps in student understanding and refine and redirect their approaches to reasoning and problem-solving.

Students are enjoying the opportunities to present their ideas and mathematical strategies to one another. As they seek out, listen to, and value the ideas and perspectives of others, they are able to maximize their own learning while supporting the growth and achievements of others. This is one example of what taking ownership of mathematical knowledge looks and feels like in The Hive. 

This week's guest bloggers reflect on these experiences. Enjoy.

Conversations help me improve my math because once someone would share their ideas with me, I would get a better understanding of what I needed to do.   - @booksrule

Our conversations in math help me a lot. For example, when I ask for help from a classmate, sometimes it helps me understand it better. Especially, @writingmachine. She is really kind and helpful and cares that you are struggling and she wants to help. Half the reason I understand multiplication is because of her (that, and practice).    - @softballpiggy

Our conversations about math help us improve our understanding of math in so many ways. For example, our big conversations that we have help me understand things WAY more. The conversations also help me see other students sharing their math tricks and different strategies for solving problems. All of this is helping me be a better mathematician.   - @Gamerhead41

My conversations about math help me a lot. I like talking about how to break math down so that I can understand it enough to use it. This also helps me feel confident enough to move on. I want to give a shout-out to @sunflower and @Burt for helping me understand something that was really hard, but was easy for others. They were really helpful and kind.    - @TheLightningDragon

The math conversations help me a lot. For example, when we are working with partners, we can help each other using different strategies . I would like to give a shout-out to @puppyonline because she recently helped me understand something I was having a lot of trouble with.   - @softballgirl123

The great thing about being able to have conversations about math is that you always learn something new. We never have to be afraid to ask someone for help because everyone always says "yes".    - @cheerqueen

Personally, I think our conversations about math help us be better listeners/learners and help us understand other people's concepts of math. It helps us be better listeners because we are listening to classmates' ideas and strategies that they use. The conversations also help me go above and beyond what I already know.    - @Potato 



No comments:

Post a Comment

We're Banking On It!

  By now, you've probably heard the buzz about our classroom economy. It's certainly been one of the most highlighted learning exper...