Getting Students to Talk Math

You're standing up at the board, writing a math question. When you ask for the answer, the brighter students will try to answer. The rest of the class just sits there...unengaged, feeling lost because they couldn't figure out the answer fast enough or at all. Your top students are doing just fine. But what about the others? How do we get them to participate?

In my Grade 1 class, we use to start the day out with the "agenda" activity. Two students would pick up agendas. We would then count each pile and make a number sentence, for example, 13 + 12 = 25 agendas. Then we would take turns breaking those numbers down to make longer number sentences. It went something like this:

13 + 12 = 25

10 + 3 + 10 + 2 = 25

5 + 5 + 3 + 10 + 1 + 1 = 25

2 + 3 + 5 + 3 + 7 + 1 + 1 = 25

And so on. As the numbers got smaller, more students would join in because they could work at that level. By the end of the activity, everyone is engaged - if not participating, at least, watching - and the board is full of number sentences. We would look at what we had done and just have this great feeling of accomplishment! That was the beginning.

Learning math through problem solving is also a great way to get students engaged and to talk about math. I gave this question to my Grade 1's:

I had 5 apples. Some were red. Some were yellow. How many apples were red and how many were yellow?

Everyone could draw 5 apples in their journal and colour some red and some yellow. The exciting part was when we shared our answers. If someone said "there were 3 red and 2 yellow", other students with that answer felt validated. Brighter students would realize that there were more combinations, which helped others learn while those with more difficulty still got the "right" answer. They all wanted to share!

When a student would share, I would ask the class "did anyone else have that answer?" "what answer did YOU have?", "how did you solve the problem?", and "what is another way to do that?". The only problem was that everyone wanted to talk about what they had done and we would run out of time!

In my next blog, we will talk more about "math talk" and how it helps students access the curriculum.

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