1. Although I didn't have an official written lesson plan to teach this week ,the teacher gave me a place value chart and a few worksheets to go over with the students. I have only been working with the students for about a week, and this was the first time we weren't testing . I wasn't very comfortable just going over a worksheet, since I'm used to doing more interactive activities to teach math, but I also wanted to be helpful to the teacher. I tried to use some of these talk moves, especially revoicing and asking the students to apply their own reasoning to someone else's reasoning. Wait time was more of a challenge because, although I felt the students did need time to think, the more wait time I gave them, the more off-task they seemed to get. I really had to find a balance between giving them "wait time" and giving them time to just goof around.
I feel that the talk moves I did use were effective, and had the students grasped the concept better, I would have applied some of the more "higher order" talk moves such as asking the student to apply their own reasoning to someone else's reasoning. But when working with students who have trouble explaining their own reasoning (especially ELL students) to begin with, this is often the last talk move I want to use.
2. If I could re-do this lesson, I would probably use the talk moves more deliberately and more effectively. I have to admit, I didn't consciously ask the students the questions with the "talk moves" in mind, but maybe if I had, the lesson would have gone more smoothly. Also, I think that after I practice the skill of identifying the place value of different digits in the numbers (which is the skill I was teaching) more with the students, I will be able to apply talk moves such as "asking students to apply their own reasoning to someone else's reasoning."
Once I was ready to apply this talk move to my teaching however, I feel that it would help my students better understand their own thinking as well as other students' ways of solving the same problem.
Thanks for sharing this, Kate. I'm glad you got a chance to critique your own thinking and use of the talk moves, and that you were able to see just how difficult it is to really use things like Wait Time deliberately.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point as to how hard it is to just throw these sorts of Talk Moves into your instruction without specifically thinking about them. They can sound like they're easy to do, but they're really pretty hard to do well and take time and experience to hone. Thanks for being honest.
And I would have liked to see more specifics as to how you used the talk moves. Where there specific places? Can you recall specific questions or ideas? It's not easy to remember things to this specificity, but it's a good habit to build.
Kate,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about how you used math talk moves in your lesson. The relating to someone else's reasoning move could be extremely difficult for ELL students, and that brings up a very important point of how well these moves work for those students.
Keep on teaching. :)
Jennifer
I too find it extremely difficult to ask my students to revoice the strategies of a peer. All of my students are ELLs and at times, very Spanish dominant. Lacking great confidence in oral language, it takes them much effort to describe their own work. I also don't think my students always understand their peers descriptions of a problem, but if I incorporated a variety of Talk Moves and assisted by revoicing myself, then perhaps the students work will be better understood by all. I know that when I revoice for the group, at least students are being exposed to higher vocabulary and language.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless while asking students to revoice another's strategy may be difficult, at the same time, I don't think we should underestimate our students. I hope to try this out by having my students revoice their peers responses during this coming week's math lessons. We'll see how it goes!