Active Learning: Revisiting the Shift, Part 3

Two students engaged in mathematical discourse use a sort to deepen their understanding of slope in my pre-algebra class.

Active Learning: Revisiting the Shift, Part 3

The Solution Spaces hashtag and motto is something that I’ve always believed in as a teacher. I cannot adequately meet the needs of my students if I don’t know them. I have to converse with them, get to know how they feel, think, and view the world. This third move touches upon how I used questions and curricular adjustments as vehicles for trust and community development, and how important it is to get comfortable with listening to students when they share.

Move #3. Design opportunities for discourse: Specialized lessons with both guiding and extension questions create opportunities for rich mathematical discourse. Pages of naked-number problems, or exercises without any context, will not encourage discussion, and dense word problems could ignite frustration. There has to be a balance of equations infused with real-world contexts, which generate conversations and provide depictions of math that allow students to see themselves.

Comprehension activities such as comparing and contrasting, restating, and debating ideas have to be included in the task work. We have to invest time in learning our lessons’ nuances, misconceptions, and, if applicable, multiple solutions or solution paths in order to field potential questions and maintain analytical conversation.

As teachers we must also become comfortable with the students’ initial discomfort and not jump in to “save the day.” The energy previously devoted to lecturing must shift toward facilitation of learning and become questions, words of encouragement, and clarification statements.

Additionally, teachers and students will need to become used to the beneficial awkwardness of productive struggle. We must allow ourselves to be pursued by students rather than step in and problem-solve for them.

This method can be more challenging than reading from a teacher's edition workbook or handing out a predetermined worksheet because of the level of preparation required, but it will generate student thinking in the classroom in a way that lecturing cannot. It may feel like a relinquishing of power, but it actually allows us to utilize our power in a more effective and relevant way.