Season 2 | Episode 16 – Strengthening Tasks Through Student Talk - Guest: Drs. Amber Candela and Melissa Boston

ROUNDING UP: SEASON 2 | EPISODE 16

In this episode, we are talking with Drs. Amber Candela and Melissa Boston about powerful but practical strategies for supporting student talk in the elementary math classroom.

RESOURCES

Discourse Actions to Promote Student Access

Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching to Inform Instructional Quality

5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions, 2nd edition

TRANSCRIPT

Mike Wallus: One of the goals I had in mind when we first began recording Rounding Up was to bring to life the best practices that we aspire to in math education and to offer entry points so that educators would feel comfortable trying them out in their classrooms. Today, we're talking with Drs. Amber Candela and Melissa Boston about powerful but practical strategies for supporting student talk in the elementary math classroom. 

Welcome to the podcast, Amber and Melissa. We're really excited to be talking with you today.

Amber Candela: Thank you for having us. 

Melissa Boston: Yes, thank you.

Mike: So we've done previous episodes on the importance of offering kids rich tasks, but one of the things that you two would likely argue is that rich tasks are necessary, but they're not necessarily sufficient, and that talk is actually what makes the learning experience really blossom. Is that a fair representation of where you all are at?

Melissa: Yes. I think that sums it up very well. In our work, which we've built on great ideas from Smith and Stein , about tasks and the importance of cognitively challenging tasks and work on the importance of talk in the classroom. Historically, it was often referred to as “talk moves.” We've taken up the term “discourse actions” to think about how do the actions a teacher takes around asking questions and positioning students in the classroom—and particularly these talk moves or discourse actions that we've named “linking” and “press”—how those support student learning while students are engaging with a challenging task.

Mike: So I wonder if we could take each of the practices separately and talk through them and then talk a little bit about how they work in tandem. And Melissa, I'm wondering if you could start unpacking this whole practice of linking. How would you describe linking and the purpose it plays for someone who, the term is new for them?

Melissa: I think as mathematics teachers, when we hear “linking,” we immediately think about the mathematics and linking representations or linking strategies. But we’re using it very specifically here as a discourse action to refer to how a teacher links student talk in the clas

Episode Transcript

(00:03):
One of the goals I had in mind when wefirst began recording rounding up was to
bring to life the best practices thatwe aspire to in math education and to
offer entry points so that educatorswould feel comfortable trying them out in
their classrooms.
Today we're talking with doctorsAmber Kandela and Melissa Boston about
powerful but practical strategies forsupporting student talk in the elementary

(00:27):
math classroom. Welcome tothe podcast Amber and Melissa.
We're really excited tobe talking with you today.
Thank you for having us. Yes, thank you.
So we've done previous episodes on theimportance of offering kids rich tasks,
but one of these things that you twowould likely argue is that rich tasks are
necessary, but they're notnecessarily sufficient,

(00:48):
and that talk is actually what makesthe learning experience really blossom.
Is that a fair representationof where you all are at?
Yes. I think that sums itup very well in our work,
which we've built on greatideas from Smith and Stein
about tasks and the importanceof cognitively challenging tasks and work on the

(01:08):
importance of talk in theclassroom. Historically,
it was often referred to as talk moves.
We've taken up the term discourseactions to think about how do the
actions a teacher takes aroundasking questions and positioning
students in the classroom,
and particularly these talk moves ordiscourse actions that we've named linking

(01:31):
and press how those supportstudent learning while students are
engaging with a challenging task.
So I wonder if we could take each of thepractices separately and talk through
them and then talk a little bit abouthow they work in tandem. And Melissa,
I'm wondering if you could startunpacking this whole practice of linking.
How would you describe linking and thepurpose it plays for someone who the term

(01:54):
is new for them?
I think as mathematicsteachers, when we hear linking,
we immediately think about themathematics and linking representations or
linking strategies.
But we are using it very specificallyhere as a discourse action
to refer to how a teacher linksstudent talk in the classroom

(02:14):
and the explicit moves a teachermakes to link students' ideas.
Sometimes a linking move is signaledby the teacher using a student's name,
so referring to a strategy or anidea that a student might've offered.
Sometimes linking mighthappen if a teacher revoice a student's idea and puts it
back out there for the class to consider.

(02:36):
The idea is in the way that we're using,
linking that it's linkswithin the learning community,
so links between people in the classroomand the ideas offered by those people,
of course.
But the important thing here that we'relooking for is how the links between
people are established in the verbal,
the explicit talk moves or discourseactions that the teacher's making.

(02:59):
What might that sound like?
So that might sound like, oh, Inoticed that Amber used a table. Amber,
tell us how you used a table. And thenafter Amber would explain her table,
I might say, Mike,
can you tell me what this line ofAmber's table means or how is her table
different from the table you created?
You're making me think aboutthose two aspects, Melissa,

(03:21):
this idea that there'smathematical value for the class,
but there's also this connectivitythat happens when you're doing linking.
And I wonder how you think about thevalue that that has in a classroom. We.
Definitely have talked aboutthat in our work as well,
and thinking about how a teacher canelevate a student's status in mathematics
by using their name or using their idea,

(03:43):
just marking or identifying somethingthat the student said is mathematically
important that's worthy of the class,
considering further creating theseopportunities for student to student
talk by asking students to compare theirstrategies or if they have something
to add on to what another student said.
Sometimes just asking them to repeat whatanother student said so that there's a

(04:07):
different accountabilityfor listening to your peers.
If you can count on theteacher to revoice everything,
you could tune out whatyour peers are saying,
but if you might be asked to restate whatone of your classmates had just said,
now there's a bit more of an investmentin really listening and understanding
and making sense.
Yeah,
I really appreciate this idea that there'sa way in which that conversation can

(04:31):
elevate a student's ideas,
but also to raise a student's status bynaming their idea and positioning it as
important.
I have a good example from a high schoolclassroom where a student who was able
to solve the contextual problemabout systems of equations.
So two equations,
and it was important for the storywhen the two equations or the two lines

(04:54):
intersected.
And so one student was able to do thatvery symbolically. They created a graph,
they solved the system of equationswhere another student said, oh,
I see what you did.
You found the differencein the cost per minute,
and you also found thedifference in the starting point,
and then one had to catch up to the other.

(05:15):
So the way that the teacherpositioned those two strategies,
one had used a sense-making approachbased really in the context.
The other had used their knowledge ofalgebra, and by positioning them together,
it was actually the student who hadused the algebra had higher academic
status, but the student who had reasonedthrough it had made this breakthrough.

(05:36):
That was really the ahamoment for the class.
That is super cool. Amber,
can we shift to press and ask you totalk a little bit about what press looks
like?
Absolutely.
So how Melissa was talking about linkingis holding students accountable to the
community, presses more around holdingstudents accountable to the mathematics.
And so the questions the teacher isgoing to ask is going to be more related

(05:59):
specifically to the mathematics.So can you explain your reasoning?
How did you get that answer?What does this X mean?
What does that intersection point mean?
And so the questions are more targetedat keeping the math conversation
in the public space longer.
I thought it was really helpful to justhear the example that Melissa shared.

(06:19):
I'm wondering if there's an examplethat comes to mind that might shed some
light on this.
So when I'm in elementary classroomsand teachers are asking their kids
about different problems, andkids will be like, I got two.
How did you get to whatoperation did you use?
Why did you use addition when youcould have used something else?

(06:40):
So it's really pressing atthe, yes, you got the answer,
but how did you get the answer?
How does it make sense to youso that you're making the kids
rather than the teacherjustify the mathematics that's involved and they're the
ones validating their answers and saying,yes, this is why I did this. Because.
I think there was a point when I waslistening to the two of you speak about

(07:01):
this where, and forgive me ifI paraphrase this a little bit,
but you had an example where a teacherwas interacting with a student and the
student said something to the effectof, I get it, or I understand.
And the teacher came back and shesaid, and what do you understand?
And it was really interesting becauseit threw the justification back to the
student.

(07:22):
Right? Really what thelinking and press does,
it keeps the math actionable longerto all of the peers in the room.
So it's having thisdiscussion out loud publicly.
So if you didn't get theproblem fully all the way,
you can hear your peers through thepress moves, talk about the mathematics,
and then you can use thelinking moves to think through,

(07:43):
well maybe if Mike didn't understand,if he revoice Melissa's comment,
he has the opportunity to practicethis mathematics speaking it.
And then you might be able totake that and be like, oh wait,
I think I know how to finishsolving the problem. Now.
I think the part that I want to pull backand linger on a little bit is part of
the purpose of press is to keep theconversation about the mathematics

(08:07):
in the space longer for kids to beable to have access to those ideas.
I want y'all to unpackthat just a little bit.
Having linking and press at the end isholding the conversation longer in the
classroom.
And so the teacher is using the pressmoves to get at the mathematics so the
kids can access it more.And then by linking,
you're bringing in the community tothat space and inviting them to add

(08:32):
what do you agree? Do you disagree?Can you revoice what someone said?
Do you have any questionsabout what's happening?
So when we talk about discourse actions,
the initial discourse action would bethe questions that the teacher asks.
So there's a good task to start with.
Students have worked on this task andproduced some solution strategies,
now we're ready to discuss them.

(08:53):
The teacher asks some so that studentsstart to present or share their work,
and then it's after students' responselinking and press come in as these
follow-up moves to do what Amber said,
to have the mathematics stayin the public space longer,
to pull more kids intothe public space longer.
So we're hoping that by spending moretime on the mathematics and having more

(09:17):
kids access the mathematics,
that we're bringing more kids along forthe ride with whatever mathematics it is
that we're learning.
You're putting language to somethingthat I don't know that I had before,
which is this idea that the longer wecan keep the conversation about the
ideas publicly bouncing around,
there are some kids who may needto hear an idea or a strategy

(09:41):
or a concept articulated in multipledifferent ways to piece together their
understanding.
And like Melissa was saying earlier,
the thing that's great aboutlinking is oftentimes in a classroom
space, teachers ask a question,kids answer, the teacher moves on,
the engagement does drop. But bykeeping the conversation going longer,

(10:04):
the linking piece of it, youmight get called onto revoice.
So you need to be activelypaying attention to your peers because it's on the
kids now. The mathauthority has been shared,
so the kids are the ones alsomaking sense of what's happening.
But it's on me to listen to mypeers because if I disagree,
there's an expectation that I'll say that.
Or if I agree or I might want to addon to what someone else is saying.

(10:27):
So oftentimes I feel like this patternof teacher, student, teacher, student,
teacher, student happens, and thenwhat can start to happen is teacher,
student, student, student teacher.
And so it kind of createsthis space where it's not just
back and forth, it kind popcornsmore around with the kids.

(10:48):
You are starting to touch on somethingthat I did want to talk about though,
because I think when I cameinto this conversation,
what was in my head is how this supportskids in terms of their mathematical
thinking.
And I think where you two have startedto go is what happens to kids who are in
a classroom where LincolnPress are a common practice,
and what happens to classrooms where yousee this being enacted on a consistent

(11:13):
basis? What does it mean for kids?
What changes about theirmathematical learning experience?
As we observe a lot of classrooms,
and it's really interesting when yousee even primary grade students give an
answer and immediately say,I think it's five because,
and they provide their justificationjust as naturally as they provide their

(11:34):
answer or they're listening to theirpeers and they're very eager to say,
I agree with you, I disagreewith you, and here's why.
Or I did something similar, or here'show my diagram is slightly different.
So to hear children and studentstaking that up is really great.
And it just a shift in the amount oftime that you hear the teacher talking

(11:56):
versus the amount of timeyou hear children talking and what you're able to take
away as the teacher or the educatorinformatively about what they know and
understand based on whatyou're hearing them say.
And so classrooms wherethis has become the norm,
you see fewer instances where the teacherhas to use linking and press because
students are picking this up naturally.

(12:18):
As we were sitting here and I waslistening to y'all talk, Amber,
the thing that I wanted to come backto is I started reflecting on my own
practice and how often, even if I wasorchestrating or trying to sequence,
it was teacher student, teacher,student, teacher, student.
It bounced back to me, and I'm reallykind of intrigued by this idea,
teacher, student, student, studentteacher, that the discourse,

(12:40):
it's moving from a back andforth between one teacher,
one student rinse and repeat,
and more students actually taking upthe discourse. Am I getting that right?
Yes.
And I think really the thought is wealways want to talk about the mathematics,
but we also have to havesomething for the community.
And that's why the linking is therebecause we also need to hold kids

(13:01):
accountable to the community that they'rein as much as we need to hold them
accountable to the mathematics.
So Amber, I want to think about what doesit look like to take this practice up?
If you were going to give an educatora little nudge or maybe even just a
starting point where teacherscould take up linking and press,
what might that look like if you imaginedkind of that first nudge or that first

(13:23):
starting point that startsto build this practice?
We have some checklistswith sentence stems in it,
and I think it's taking those sentencestems and thinking about when I ask
questions like, how did you get that andhow do you know this about that answer?
That's when you're askingabout the mathematics. And then when you start to ask,

(13:44):
do you agree with what? So-and-so said,
can you revoice what theysaid in your own words?
That's holding kids accountable to thecommunity and just really thinking about
the purpose. I'm asking this question,
do I want to know about the math or doI want to build the conversation between
the students? And then once yourealize what you want that to be,
you have the stem for thequestion that you want to ask.

(14:05):
Same question, Melissa.
I think if you have the teacher whois using good tasks and asking those
good initial questions that encouragethinking, reasoning, explanations,
even starting by having them try out.
Once a student gives you aresponse asking, how do you know?
Or How did you get that? And listeningto what the student has to say.

(14:27):
And then as the next follow up,
thinking about that linkingmove coming after that.
So even a very formulaic approachwhere a student gives a response,
you use a press move, hearwhat the student has to say,
and then maybe put it back outto the class with a linking move.
Would someone like torepeat what Amber just said,
or can someone restate that in theirown words or whatever the linking move

(14:50):
might be?
So if these two practices arenew to someone who's listening,
are there any particular resources orrecommendations that you'd share with
someone who wants to keep learning.
Why? Of course, weabsolutely have resources.
We wrote an article for the N ctms,
MTLT called Discourse Actionsto Promote Student Access,

(15:10):
and there's some vignettes inthere that you can read through,
and then there's checklists with sentencestems for each of the linking and
press moves.
Also, along with that article,
we've used a lot of the resourcesfrom ncms Principles to Actions
toolkit that's online,
and some of the resources arefree and accessible to everyone.

(15:34):
And if you wanted to dig in a bit more,
we do have a book called Making Senseof Mathematics to Inform Instructional
Quality,
and that goes in depth with all of ourrubrics and has other scenarios and
videos around the linking and press movesalong with other parts of the rubrics
that we were talking about earlier.
That's awesome. We will linkall of that in our show notes.

(15:55):
Thank you both so much for joining us.It was a real pleasure talking with you.
Thanks for having us. Thank you.
This podcast is brought to you by theMath Learning Center and the Meyer Math
Foundation dedicated to inspiringand enabling all individuals to
discover and develop theirmathematical confidence and ability.