Mathematics Identity Blog Entry 3 - Math Talk Moves

A math moment that has really stood out in my placement was when I was observing my cooperating teacher working with a student in the resource classroom one-on-one. For most of the day I am out pulling small groups from general education classrooms, and I do not usually get to sit and observe my cooperating teacher teach. However on this day, I had the pleasure of watching her play a math game with a student to help improve his computation fluency. The object of the game was to fill a board with manipulatives by rolling the dice and adding the numbers together. The student was adding the the numbers together and he was frequently one number off every time. For example, he would roll a 3 and an 5 and he would say 7.  The teachers response was just repeated practice and allowing him to use a number line to visually see the numbers.  My cooperating teacher also used many of the five productive talk moves to guide the students understanding. When the student would add up the numbers correctly she would revoice the problem by saying something like: "You're right 3+2 is five!" She also repeatedly let the student have plently of time to sove the problem (using move #5 : waiting using wait time) I believe that this was effective because it allowed the student not to feel rushed, therefore increasing his chances of correctly solving the problem.

Given the circumstance, I think that this lesson was close to perfect the way that it was played. However, if you had a large number of students to teach at once, I think that this lesson could also be played in a large group, and then the students would have access to their peers thought-process about the computation problems. If they were working in a large group, a teacher might be able to ask students to use the talk move # 2, for example we could ask the students to restate someone else's reasoning about how they solved a problem. This may be beneficial to certain students because maybe hearing the explanation from a peer would help foster understanding.

manipulatives used for the game

a place where the student could visually represent the computation problem if the number line was not sufficient