Value student voice and collaboration

Student discussion and collaboration has been found to have significant impact on students’ motivation, persistence, and learning and to support students in their development of mathematical language.

If students spend most of a lesson watching someone else do the math and then duplicate what that person does, then they are unlikely to see how a new idea connects to their prior learning or to generate their own conjectures relevant to the topic at hand.

(Allen & Schnell 2016)

 

Discussions can take place in small groups or as a whole class. Discussion represents a valuable insight into student thinking and can serve as formative assessment that helps teachers make decisions about instruction (Cirillo 2013). Discussion also provides a forum to name and publicly recognise individual students’ skills and talents to show them what we view as mathematical success (Allen & Schnell 2016).

Discussion and collaboration have been found to provide students with sense of agency and authority over the learning process (Boaler 2002). As students talk, they not only share ideas, but also receive feedback about their thinking. They can see if their thinking aligns with that of other students (Cirillo 2013).

Read more about designing collaborative learning here.

Key messages:

> Correct answers aren’t the only useful contributions to discussion; questions, alternative solutions, false starts and mistakes all help advance learning

> Mathematicians often work collaboratively to solve problems

> Explaining our ideas to others helps us understand our ideas more fully

> Understanding other people’s thinking is helpful in developing our own understanding

 

Reflect

  • How often do you position students as the drivers of problem-solving approaches?
  • Who holds the mathematical authority in your classroom?
  • Are all students actively engaged during problem-solving activities?
  • Do you provide students with opportunities to think, write or talk to a partner before they answer questions directed at the whole class?

Try this

In your classroom

  • Establish class norms to ensure the learning environment is safe for sharing ideas
  • Explore the Classroom talks strategy 
  • Support students to engage in argumentation by revoicing - repeating, rephrasing, or expanding on student talk
  • Use the Harvard thinking routine, Claim, Support, Question, which promotes reasoning with supporting evidence. Firstly, a student identifies a claim or offers an interpretation, for example a graph shows a declining trend. They identify support of their claim using graph related data. Invite students to question the claim or any evidence that has been used to support it. You may decide to write the claim on a chart with two columns one for supports one for questions. Ask students what new thoughts they have on the topic.
  • Model valuing student voice by sharing student work samples that illustrate key mathematical ideas

In your school

  • In the school newsletter, share images of student collaborative work, such as whiteboards annotated by different students
  • Hold a Family Maths Night, where families come together and engage in maths-related collaborative activities, games, and challenges. Find practical support in how to host a maths event, including activity ideas and advice about designing the program here:
  • Host a Math Treasure Hunt, where families can follow clues and solve math problems around the school to find hidden treasure or prizes
  • Host an Open Morning where parents and carers can observe students engaging in maths discussions and collaborative problem-solving