Strategies for Having Successful Math Discussions

Many math teachers might struggle with finding the right problems for their students to work on during class. For new teachers in particular, this task may seem daunting or nearly impossible to do. However, at the South Dakota STEM conference, Sharon Rendon did a presentation that provided tools to help ease this process. The presenter talked about five practices that a teacher can use to help find problems that would help develop math discussions that are productive, not destructive. The five practices she mentioned are anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting.

First is the anticipating step. In this step, the teacher should do the problem themselves to try and make sure the problem is appropriate for the students. The teacher can use their technology to see if they want students to use specific websites like Desmos for coming up with the solution. Another part to this step could be anticipating what the students might get out of the problem or reviewing whether the problem is a good application of the current unit. If the students see no connection, they may not want to work on it.

Next comes the monitoring and selecting steps. This one can come in multiple parts. The first part could be the teacher identifying techniques that they used to solve the problem and make a list with the second part being walking around the classroom to see what techniques the students used. If the students get off track, then the teacher could ask a question to get them on track. The selecting step is crucial because this is where the teacher chooses what problems to give to students. The problems should be challenging because they will help understanding go up but not too challenging, so the students give up.

The last two steps are sequencing and connecting. These steps assume that students are wrapping up their work and the class is ready to come together. The sequencing step is where the teacher determines how the students should show their work. They could decide to show common misconceptions or errors first and then show the correct solution. They could also have the students show their work by drawing on the whiteboard or other surfaces to help illustrate to other students. The connecting step can help students understand how that problem ties into others that they did and possibly increase their understanding of other concepts not discussed.