Math Readings Summary

The Stein article "Putting Umph in Discussion" was about how to spark good mathematical conversation in the classroom. It talked about how a lot of educators tend to get into the habit of spoon feeding their students lessons. It talked about breaking the habit of stepping in and correcting wrong solutions. The article is about taking a step back and letting your students take the reigns and come to an answer through taking sides and defending their ideas using mathematical evidence. According to the article in order to do so, you must establish a classroom atmosphere of respect and trust so that kids can feel comfortable taking a risk and aren't afraid of being wrong. In order to do so, a task must be selected that has the potential to elicit different solutions and students taking different positions.

Chapter nine in Chapin is all about writing math lessons. According to the chapter a math lesson is broken down into five parts. Those parts being identifying the mathematical goals, anticipating confusion, asking questions, managing classroom talk, and planning the implementation. When I look at those five steps I see one that I would consider the most important especially if you are looking to create a math discussion amongst your students. That is asking questions, because in my opinion if you ask the right questions the right way you can forget about managing classroom talk because your students will do most of it for you. The right question can lead to a great discussion, while the wrong question can lead to a one sentence answer.

Kazemi's "Discourse that Promotes Conceptual Understanding" is about the importance of really explaining the why's of student thinking and work. The article talks about how important this explanation is to a students conceptual understanding of the ideas they are learning. By explaining their thinking step by step the students should really be able to grasp exactly what is happening when they say carry the 1.

In the Atkins article "Listening to Students: The Power of Mathematical Conversations" talks about how important the teachers role as a listener is to creating a good math talk. It talks about the teacher taking on a somewhat unfamiliar role in most math classes and not being the end all be all source of knowledge, but encouraging the students to learn from each other. A lot of it talked about setting up the classroom in a way that promotes this kind of learning. My classroom is set up perfectly for it, unfortunately my C.T. doesn't utilize it to its fullest potential.