How do we get students talking?

So, how do we get students talking? Van de Walle and Lovin (2006) stresses that “classroom discussion based on students’ own ideas and solutions to problems is absolutely ‘foundational to children’s learning.’’ (p.5). Therefore, discussions must focus on students own thinking. What better place to start than to have students talk about themselves and what they did to solve the problem, or how they are thinking about what they are leaning. Hey, you must capitalize on children’s inflated egos. To begin this worthwhile mathematical journey, students must be given opportunities to talk in their math classrooms and teachers must learn how to listen. For teachers, this means stepping away from the whiteboard and stepping out of those teacher shoes to give students the control and power of classroom discussion, with helpful guidance and support, of course. Encouragement to talk about their own ideas, no matter how silly they may sound, will lead to students seeing that their thoughts and ideas are important. The ultimate goal is to have students talking about the math they are learning and how they are able to make sense of it. If students are really having a tough time trying to verbally communicate their thinking, have them use other mediums first, such as writing about their ideas, or give them something physical to talk about. For example, students may want to use manipulatives when explaining themselves as this redirects the focus from a shy student to the manipulative. The use of manipulatives also allows students to use the language of the manipulatives to make communication easier.
To get conversations going, Small (2008) suggests teachers encourage group discussions; allow more wait time after a question is posed and delay reaction to or evaluation of a student response. It may be worthwhile at this time to ask the class, or group, to evaluate the response having them justify their thinking. Teachers may want to be cognizant of the way they group students. Ensuring students are grouped with others they can talk to is important.
To help facilitate and guide discussions, prompting may be necessary. Asking students carefully thought out questions, such as ‘Can you show me how you did that?” “How do you know that is correct?” Why do you think that?”can help guide student thinking, especially when students have come to an inappropriate conclusion. Asking the right kinds of questions to guide student thinking may be all that is needed in order to bring them back on the right track. Most times, as students begin talking through or explaining their thinking, they realize their mistake and are able to come to correct conclusions. There will be more about questioning and how to create good questions later in the paper.
Mathematical conversations also become a valuable tool for the teacher. These discussions make it very helpful to assess student learning as it can lead to understanding how a student is thinking about something and how they were able to reach the appropriate/inappropriate solutions. As students explain or justify their work, teachers get to hear their explanations. As students explain their work to one another, they may be more able to help others understand the concept than the teacher. The student who is explaining gets to acquire a deeper understanding of the concept as he/she talks through his/her thinking and the others that are listening are given greater access to understanding. This deeper understanding of student learning makes instruction easier as the teacher does not have to guess or assume students know something. Teachers can use this vital information to plan their next lesson knowing exactly where student understanding on the concept is. This can not be achieved by teaching math in the traditional way, where students are only expected to produce the correct answers.