Math Talk Moves: Five Steps to Student Success!

Having interned in elementary schools for the past three semesters, I’ve seen--all too often—how very reluctant and unhappy some students are when the time of day arrives when they must leave their general education peers to receive “special help” in the resource room.

Compounding the already prevalent social stigma associated with requiring services in the resource room is the factiuyuyt that the students leaving their general education classrooms may be leaving behind much more interactive and enjoyable learning environments.  In the hands of a teacher who doesn’t recognize that his/her responsibility in a resource room setting should be to provide instruction that meets the individual student’s interests as well as his/her instructional needs, learning, for students with learning disabilities, can be a painful experience.    

This, however, is far from the case in the math lessons I’ve observed in the resource room at my placement school!  The supportive, collaborative atmosphere that the math resource teacher I observe has created makes it hard for students not to feel empowered and respected regardless of the difficulty of the tasks which they’re presented. During most of the lessons this resource room teacher implements, the small student-to-teacher ratio (usually ranging from one-on-one instruction to teaching groups of three students) allows instruction to be highly individualized. Consequently, throughout the lessons, each student is able to enjoy the opportunity to work directly with the teacher when solving some problems, to share his/her thinking trajectories, and to answer probing questions designed to elicit deeper reflection about the processes in which he/she is engaged.  It is during this time, that Chapin’s “Five Productive Talk Moves” often become the focus of instruction.

While reading about the “Talk Moves,” I could imagine their value in the classroom, but, really, it wasn’t until I saw this teacher actually using them during instructional time that I really understood just how empowering these questions can be to students.  During a particular lesson, I observed the teacher working one-on-one with a student who for the past few months has experienced a great amount of difficulty with the concept of a “fact family.”  According to the teacher, while the student is able to solve the math problems using manipulatives, the relationship between these numbers seems transitory to him, and, as such, while he night sometimes say four plus three equals seven, a few moments later he might give a completely inappropriate numerical response to seven minus four—almost as if he has lost track of the fact family.  In an effort to communicate the permanence of the relationships between numbers in a “fact family,” I observed the teacher first relating the three numbers that make up a “fact family” to the three members of the student’s own family. After creating a link between the number four and the student’s mother, the number three and the student’s father, and finally, the number seven and the student himself, the teacher explained to the student “You wouldn’t have some stranger come, join your family, and kick another member of your family out, would you?  Well, the same is true with these ‘fact families.’  Four and three and seven are always going to be in a ‘fact family’ together.”  She then followed this explanation with an example of the problem illustrated with manipulatives actually shaped like people—a nice touch, I thought!

With manipulatives in front of him and the answer in his mind, the teacher then introduced the first “Talk Move” in the lesson.  Asking the student what another formula in the “fact family” looked like, the teacher asked him to explain what he had been thinking when he initially said that “seven minus four must equal five.”  The student began to justify his incorrect answer when--suddenly understanding-- he turned to his manipulatives instead!  Counting out seven manipulatives, the student then used the “Counting Down” strategy to arrive at the correct answer, three.  The teacher then used another “Talk Move” when she re-voiced his strategy, saying something similar to “So, let me see if I get this right.  You first counted seven manipulatives, and, then, you looked at the problem and saw that you needed to take away four of the manipulatives.  But I didn’t see you take those manipulatives away!  How did you end up getting the answer?”  Re-voicing his strategy in a way that still asked him to explain the procedure he applied to eventually get to the answer made the student more aware of the strategy, perhaps increasing the likelihood that he will use the “Count Down” approach in the future.

 Finally, throughout the lesson, the teacher expertly employed the strategy of “Wait Time.”  As I watched the student process and then progress throughout the lesson, I came to see how critical this “Talk Move” is when working with a student with a learning disability.  So often in general education placements, it’s not unusual to see those students who take longer to answer questions being ignored in classroom discussions and allowed to fall behind in their coursework.  As I watched the teacher today wait, in complete (but comfortable) silence, I was able to witness her student really thinking about the problem, analyzing the possible solutions and offering a well-reasoned answer.

Reflecting upon the lesson I observed today, the apparent effortlessness of the teacher’s implementation of these “Talk Moves” almost obscured my ability to observe them!  While reading about the different questioning practices Chapin suggests, I had pictured a classroom, at times, more like an interrogation room, with the students’ thinking constantly being challenged.  Seeing the comfortable environment that the teacher was able to create and the way she actually used the “Talk Moves,” not to question student thought, but rather, to elicit reflective thinking, has made me anxious to try some of these strategies myself! 

In a classroom where Talk Moves are expertly employed, getting through lessons without understanding the content isn't an option. :)

Of all the strategies I saw this teacher demonstrate, I think the most valuable one to use when teaching students with learning disabilities might also be the most difficult to employ: “Wait Time.”  For students in resource room, as valuable as remediation of academic skills might be, instilling in them confidence in their ability to succeed with subjects they find difficult might be equally, if not more, important.  Despite all the potential benefits of the “Wait Time” strategy, I think that this strategy might be more difficult to implement effectively, at least initially, with students who require a lot of reinforcement and scaffolding.  For a student for whom experiencing silence causes worry and uncertainty, I think that teacher gestures such as nodding your head, smiling , and even using such phrases as “you’re doing a good job, keep going!” might be helpful as he/she tries to answer the question.  Over time, the frequency of these prompts could be reduced and the duration of  “Wait Time” could be increased. 

Without Wait Time, just being able to give an answer becomes a challenge!

Two other “Talk Moves” that I want to employ in my own lessons are “Re-voicing” and asking students to restate someone else’s reasoning.  As I watched the lesson today, I really liked how the teacher’s use of “Re-voicing” enabled the student to give voice to his own procedures and thought process, enabling him to critically consider the veracity of the thoughts which shaped his actions.  As Chapin suggested in her article, when teaching groups of students, asking students to restate someone else’s reasoning can dfprove to be an effective way to have other students restate the thinking processes of their peers.  For students who might be English Language Learners (ELLs), this technique, where ELL students would repeat what their native English-speaking peers stated, would provide both practice in considering other math thought processes and also valuable practice speaking English.