Promoting Discourse in the

Mathematics Classroom

Transitioning to the Common Core

Office of Secondary Mathematics

What does discourse mean?

What teacher and student behaviors occur in a classroom where the teacher promotes discourse?

Discussion

Research Reveals

•Most math problems come from textbooks

•Pre-service teachers have little exposure to creating and developing authentic problems

•The focus is on memorization and procedures instead of reasoning and critical thinking

•Understanding mathematics is directly connected to the creation and exploration of questions

•93% of teacher questions are knowledge based focusing on recall of facts.

•The National Council for Teachers in Mathematics encourages teachers to increase student participation by “posing questions that elicit, engage, and challenge student’s thinking.

Transitioning to the Common Core

Twenty Questions /Twenty Minutes

An activity designed to help teachers evaluate the levels of questions asked

and the determine the level of discourse in their classroom

Transitioning to the Common

Transitioning to the Common Core

http://www.odu.edu/educ/roverbau/Bloom/blooms_taxonomy.htm

Activity

Rank the questions provided

Transitioning to Common Core

What evidence do you have that your selection is correct?

Convince your neighbor that your answer is correct.

Preparing Teachers and Students for the Common Core Curriculum

What type of follow up questions can be asked of a student that provides the correct answer to a knowledge based question ?

How can you rewrite the question to create discourse?

Preparing Teachers and Students for the Common Core Curriculum

http://www.nctm.org/publications/mt.aspx?id=8594

The children in the Wright family are aged 3, 8, 9, 10, and 5. What is their average age?

Remember:

Consider

There are five people in a family and their average age is 7.What might their ages be?

Round 11.8 to the nearest whole number.

Typical Question

My coach timed me running 100 meters in about 12 seconds. What numbers might have been on the stopwatch?

What If…

What is 20% of 35?

Consider

I pay $50 per month plus $.05 per minute for my cell phone. What could be my bill for this month and how many minutes did I use?

Try this instead

There are 6 birds and 2 cats. If the answer is..a. 20b. 8c. 4

What could the question be?

Try This

Preparing Teachers and Students for the Common Core Curriculum

How can we team within the department to be more intentional about creating discourse?

Ideas and/or suggestions?

Next Steps?