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While students are working on the task, the teacher will walk around and observe students' mathemati cal thinking and solution strategies. A monitoring chart is used to record student strategies and note key points in group discussions, see Figure 3 for an example. While monitoring the classroom, the teacher will go to each group and ask students about their work. The questions should focus on gathering information, probing their thinking, mak ing the math visible, encouraging reflection and justification, or advancing the thinking of the stu dents. The teacher will also use this time to ensure all group members are participating and actively engaged in the small group mathematics task. “ Carefully attending to what students do as they work makes it possible for teachers to use their ob servations to decide what and whom to focus on during the discussion that follows ” (Smith and Stein, 2018, p. 11).
the task. Student work selected to share in the full class discussion should relate to the learning goal of the lesson. When selecting the work, the teacher may also want to choose solutions with misconcep tions that show how students persevered to find a solution. Smith and Stein (2011) explain the types of strategies students typically use that you may want to share with the class. One of the most popu lar is the concrete - pictorial - abstract representation strategy. “ By making purposeful choices about the order in which students ’ work is shared, teachers can max imize the chances of achieving their mathematical goals for the discussion ” (Smith and Stein, 2018, p. 13). After selecting students' work, take a moment to think about what order you want students to share their solutions. The teacher should choose solutions that build upon each strategy to encour age connections among student thinking. For ex ample, the teacher may want to sequence students ’ work from concrete solutions (using manipulatives or drawings) to abstract solutions (algebraic ex pressions). By moving from concrete to abstract thinking, sequencing can help make the math ac cessible to all students. This popular sequence shows the different ways the mathematics is repre sented. Now that the teacher has selected and sequenced student work, the class is ready to discuss solutions to the task. The teacher will guide the discussion and encourage students to make connections among the different strategies. This is a time for students to share their reasoning and problem solv ing skills. “ Everyone benefits from mathematical discourse in the classroom: Teachers are better able to access and extend students ’ understanding and students can reflect on their own understanding while making sense of, critiquing, and building on the ideas of others ” (Champagne and Yeh, 2018, p. 70). Although making connections may seem to be Sequence: What order should students share their strategies? Connections: How are the strategies the same/ different?
Figure 2: Types of Questions
Select: What Strategies did my students use?
During the selecting phase, the teacher will think about the strategies observed while monitoring stu dents as they find their solutions. The teacher will select different strategies to discuss with the class that will highlight important math concepts and make connections to different ways of approaching
Virginia Mathematics Teacher vol. 47, no. 2
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