Transcript Engaging Students in Meaningful Dialogue

Engaging Students in Meaningful Dialogue
Amy Coltharp
Program Specialist for Title I, Part D
Bureau of Federal Educational Programs
Florida Department of Education
Engaging Students
• Strategies Used to Engage Meaningful Dialogue Among
Students
• Defining Active Learning
• Engaging ELL Learners
• Mathematical Practices Supporting Meaning Dialogue
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“Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not
learn just sitting in classes listening to teachers,
memorizing prepackaged assignments, and
spitting out answers. They have to talk about what
they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it
to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives.
They must make what they learn part of
themselves.”
Chickering & Gamson, 1987
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MAKING A CONNECTION
–Student Interests
• Consider the group of students you are teaching
(e.g., students in DJJ programs, 12th graders
opposed to 7th graders, etc.)
– Probability problems involving race car drivers
may not be of interest to a class of all females
– Real Life Situations
• Demonstrate how concepts can be applied to
situations outside of the classroom
EXAMPLES:
– Using probability to make decisions S.MD.6, 7
– Finding percent increases/decrease using
proportional relationships 7.RP.3
– Recognize situations in which a quantity grows
or decays F.LE.1
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THINKING IT THROUGH
Create a culture of ‘explanation’ instead of a
culture of the ‘right answer’
– Collect problems and tasks that have multiple
paths to a solution
There are at least three different strategies for
doing the following problem.
– Which strategy did you use?
– What is another strategy that you could
have used to solve the problem?
5 + 13 + 24 – 8 + 47 – 12 + 59 – 31 – 5 + 9 – 46 – 23 + 32 - 60
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ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING
Active Learning is defined as any strategy
that involves students in doing things and
thinking about the things they are doing.
Chickering & Gamson, 1987
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ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING
Apply questioning strategies that require
students to think and answer
Starter questions
These take the form of open-ended questions which
focus the student's thinking in a general direction and
give them a starting point.
Examples:
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How could you sort these.......?
How many ways can you find to…...?
What happens when we……?
What can be made from……?
How many different……can be found?
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ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING
Apply questioning strategies that require
students to think and answer
Questions to stimulate mathematical thinking
These questions assist students to focus on
particular strategies and help them to see patterns
and relationships.
Examples:
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What is the same?
What is different?
How can you group these?
How can this pattern help you find an answer?
What would happen if.....?
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ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING
Apply questioning strategies that require
students to think and answer
Assessment questions
Questions such as these ask students to explain
what they are doing or how they arrived at a
solution.
Examples:
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What have you discovered?
How did you find that out?
Why do you think that?
What made you decide to do it that way? Questions to
stimulate mathematical thinking
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ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING
Apply questioning strategies that require
students to think and answer
Final discussion questions
These questions draw together the efforts of the
class and prompt sharing and comparison of
strategies and solutions.
Examples:
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Why is your solution different than your neighbors?
Why/why not?
Have we found all the possibilities?
How do we know?
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ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING
Implement pairing activities such as “think, pair, and
share”
This strategy allows the student to:
• Reflect on subject content
• Deepen understanding of an issue or topic through
clarification and rehearsal with a partner
• Develop skills for small group discussion, such as
listening actively, disagreeing respectfully
• Rephrase ideas for clarity
SL.9-10.4
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ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING
Assign specific tasks for team members
during group assignments
Example:
T1 will be responsible for determining the formula that will
apply to problem; T2 will be responsible providing a list of
the unknowns; T3 will provide the steps that were taken to
reach the solution, and so on.
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“Getting students involved in their education programs is more
than having them participate; it is connecting students with
their education, enabling them to influence and affect the
program and, indeed, enabling them to become enwrapped
and engrossed in their educational experiences.”
Wehmeyer & Sands,1998
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ENCOURAGE ACTIVE LEARNING
• Provide surveys or questionnaires to students to
collect feedback on collaboration among group
members
– Surveys can be valuable tools in figuring out
what engages your math students.
• Share feedback with students if suggestions will
be used
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Making the Content Comprehensible
for ELL Learners
• Use the standards vocabulary as a teaching tool.
“Generalize, develop, describe, analyze, apply,
measure,” etc. are all words ELLs will hear in the
classroom and need to understand.
• ELLs may know how to perform the skill using
their language, they just don’t yet have the
English vocabulary.
• Use pictures, graphs, and charts whenever
possible.
• Make use of root words and cognates.
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Classroom Strategies for ELL Learners
• Group ELLs with non-ELLs to work together
• Allow more wait time for ELLs to respond.
Silence does not necessarily mean the student
does not know the answer, the ELL may be
translating the answer and need more time.
• Remember that ELLs from different countries
may display mathematical functions in different
ways.
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Common Core State Standards
Mathematical Practices
http://www.youtube.com/wa
tch?v=9pKcO9E4Flw&featu
re=relmfu
Mathematical practices develop dispositions
and habits of mind characteristic of an
education person.
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Precision in thought
Precision in the use of language and terms
Precision in argument
Sense making happens through conversations
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Mathematical Practices Supporting
Meaningful Dialogue
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in
solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the
reasoning of others
4. Model with mathematics
5. Use appropriate tools strategically
6. Attend to precision
7. Look for and make use of structure
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated
reasoning
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STANDARD 1
Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
Examples:
• A middle childhood teacher might engage his students in a
"number talk" in which students use an in/out table and a
plotted graph to "guess [the teacher’s] number."
• An early adolescence teacher might distribute cards with
different symbol strings to his students, asking them to
mingle to group and categorize their symbol strings,
explaining and defending their groupings.
• A teacher of adolescents and young adults might
continually probe her students to defend whether their
requirements for a particular quadrilateral will always be
the case, or whether there are some flaws in their group’s
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thinking that they need to refine and correct.
STANDARD 3
Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
Examples:
• A middle childhood teacher might post multiple approaches
to a problem and ask students to identify plausible
rationales for each approach as well as any mistakes made
by the mathematician.
• An early adolescence teacher might post a chart showing a
cost-analysis comparison of multiple DVD rental plans and
ask his students to formulate and defend a way of showing
when each plan becomes most economical.
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A teacher of adolescents and young adults might actively
engage her students in extended conjecture about
conditions for proof in the construction of quadrilaterals,
testing their assumptions and questioning their approaches
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STANDARD 6
Attend to Precision
Examples:
• A middle childhood teacher might engage his students in a
"number talk" in which students use an in/out table and a
plotted graph to "guess [the teacher’s] number."
• An early adolescence teacher might distribute cards with
different symbol strings to his students, asking them to
mingle to group and categorize their symbol strings,
explaining and defending their groupings.
• A teacher of adolescents and young adults might continually
probe her students to defend whether their requirements for a
particular quadrilateral will always be the case, or whether
there are some flaws in their group’s thinking that they need
to refine and correct.
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