“What do you think and why?”

Today I got to virtually meet up with the amazing math teachers at the Park City Mathematics Institute. In addition to doing beautiful math problems, they have been involved in daily sessions called “Reflections on Practice.”

21st Century PD. I am beamed into the room. Photo: Suzanne Alejandre.

I knew that they had been talking a lot about the 5 Practices, so I decided to spend my time talking about how hard it was for most students to answer the question:

What do you think and why?

Persuading children to answer this question is a big obstacle to getting rich mathematical discourse off the ground in any classroom.

But think about it. That is a really tricky question to answer, both socially and intellectually.

I asked the teachers to spend some time thinking about why students might be reluctant to participate.

They brainstormed a great list:

• Sometimes students are not able to articulate their thoughts.
• Students might fear the judgment of their classmates.
• Students have incomplete thoughts.
• They are not always sure whether a question is a “right or wrong” question or a “share your thinking” question.
• There may be social norms that communicate that being smart is bad.
• They can be in crisis in their outside lives, making the question besides the point.
• They may not see sharing their thinking as a part of their role as students.
• They may have a very individual, internal process that makes “sharing” difficult.
• They may try to share their ideas but find that they are not listened to or valued.
• Sometimes students would rather not risk trying and failing, so it is safer to just not try.
• Language barriers can make it difficult to share.

I have seen all of these things as a teacher and an observer of mathematics classrooms. It is really hard to get kids to share their thinking.

I told the teachers about two concepts that I found to help teachers address these challenges and successfully establish rich classroom discourse with their students.

The first one is classroom norms. The second is addressing social status, which I have written about here and here.

I shared a list of norms that I have found to help encourage participation.

Then I talked a little bit about status problems and how they can get in the way of productive mathematical conversation. First I defined status…

Then I talked about how status problems play out in classroom conversations.

My goal was to help teachers think about the things they can actually do to support productive participation in mathematical discussions. I gave the teachers some more time to think about these ideas and brainstorm ways of developing norms that help alleviate status problems.

Another great list was generated. I am adding my commentary to the teachers’ ideas.

• Frequently vary groupings so people can be exposed to other people. This is important. A lot of times teachers want let students choose groups, which can especially aggravate status problems around social desirability. Other times, teachers use a “high, mid, low” achievement scheme. Students quickly size that up and know where they stand in the pecking order, which reinforces academic status problems.
• Use “round-robins”: everybody gets 1 minute to speak, whether or not you use all of it. This is not one that I have used, but the teacher who introduced this idea talked about how they let the clock roll for the full minute, even when students only spoke for 15 seconds. The quiet time was usually good thinking time for his students.
• Randomly call on kids. The teacher who introduced this one explained that she had playing cards taped on students’ desk, with the number representing their group (“the kings”, “the 12s”) and the suit representing an individual student. She could then pull out a card from her deck and call on “the 2 of diamonds.” I asked her what she did when a student didn’t know. She told me that she would sometimes get others to help them or move on then come back to them later, even if only for a summary statement. I added that I think it is really important to have a clear understanding in the class that partial answers count (see the “right and wrong” answer problem above) to successfully use random calling on kids. Otherwise students might shut down and feel on the spot.
• Making an initiative to make norms school-wide.This was an insight close to my heart. As the teacher who contributed this idea said, it will be much more powerful for students to get the same message about how to participate from more adults in the school.
• Tension: having students value ideas without getting stuck on ideas. This referred to the way kids can get wedded to particular ideas, even when they are wrong. I talked about how important it was to emphasize the value of changing your mind when you are convinced, not based on who is arguing with you. This is the heart of productive mathematical conversations.
• Tension: shifting from right/wrong to reasoning. Need to be transparent. The teacher who talked about this saw that emphasizing reasoning can be a game-changer for students who are good at seeing patterns and memorizing methods. They may know how to do things but have no idea why they do things: they suddenly go from “good at math” to “challenged.” I suggested addressing the concerns of these students from the perspective of advocacy: “I love your enthusiasm for math! I know what happens as you go up the curriculum, and you will really need to understand why things work, so I am giving you a chance to build those skills now.”
• Normalizing conflict through “sentence starters.” Conflict and arguing are usually seen as bad things to students, yet we want to create situations that allow for mathematical disagreements. By using sentence frames  –– and even posting them on the classroom walls –– we can help students learn to civilly disagree. For example, “I disagree because ____” or “How do you know that _____?” This also helps students press each other for justification.
•  “Everyone listening, everyone speaking, everyone responsible for understanding.”
  This was a norm that could really help encourage participation.
• Role playing & discussion as a way of (re)establishing norms. This teacher pointed out that norms sometimes need to be talked about explicitly –– and they often need to be revisited over the course of a school year. I added that I notice that certain curriculum topics (e.g., fractions) can bring up status issues, requiring certain norms to be revisited.
• Celebrating mistakes as opportunities to learn. How is that for normalizing confusion? Normalizing mistakes as a way for everybody to think harder about a topic or idea. I asked for some specific language for this, and the teacher suggested something like, “Thank you for bringing that up. We will all understand this better by discussing this.” (Sorry! This is from memory!)
• High social status kids as “summarizers,” give them math status. Sometimes students with high social status do not have high academic status. By giving them a mathematical role, we can marshal the fact that others listen to them and help build their understanding by giving them a particular role.
• Valuing different ways of contributing. Another one close to my heart! There are many ways to be smart at mathematics, and by valuing different ways kids can contribute, we can increase participation.

Thank you to the teachers of PCMI for the great conversation! Please add anything that I forgot to the comments section, and stay in touch!