There are three productive talk formats:
whole-class discussion, small-group discussion, and partner
talk.
Whole-Class Discussion
There are several models for whole-class discussion. In one model the teacher acts as a facilitator, encouraging students to share their thinking, explain the steps in their reasoning, and build on one another's contributions. Whole-class discussion gives students that chance to engage in sustained reasoning. The purpose of whole-class discussion is to provide students with practice in mathematical reasoning that will further their mathematical learning.
Small-Class Discussion
In the small-group discussion talk format,
the teacher typically gives students a question to discuss
among themselves in groups of three to six. While the rules
for whole-class talk formats are familiar to students, they
may need help becoming familiar with the rules for small
group discussion. Since multiple conversations are occurring, the
teacher circulates, listening and observing students, then using this time as an opportunity to confer with small groups of students (see Conferring).
Partner Talk
In this talk format, the teacher asks
a question and then gives students a short time, maybe about
a minute or two at the most, to put their thoughts into words
with their nearest neighbor. A teacher can initiate partner
talk by saying "Turn and talk about this with the person
next to you." This results in a much noisier class,
but the noise has benefits as more students think aloud.
After a few moments the teacher can stop the partner talk
and return to the format of whole-class discussion.
Click photo to enlarge
prompts for partner
talk |
supporting partner
talk |
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