Uncovering Student Thinking

In this episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie consider ways to uncover how students are actually thinking about the mathematics they are learning. Using a real-life, recent incident between Curtis and his sixth grade son, our hosts consider the challenging fact that many students think that success in math class means figuring out what answer the teacher (or the computer program/app, or the back of the book) is looking for. 

They posit that when educators are always focused on the mathematics of the moment – what is being learned in a single lesson, week, or unit – we can focus students on the smaller grain size ideas instead of helping them to place their learning in the bigger picture of mathematics as a whole. As always, the episode recognizes that teachers work very hard at a very complex task: teaching young minds to deeply understand important mathematics!

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• “Listening to and Learning from Student Thinking,” by Elham Kazemi, Lynsey K. Gibbons, Kendra Lomax, and Megan L. Franke from Teaching Children Mathematics, October 2016.
• “Making Student Thinking Public,” by Shari Stockero and Laura R. Van Zoest from The Mathematics Teacher, May 2011.
• “Attending to Evidence of Students’ Thinking during Instruction,” by Miriam Gamoran Sherin and James Lynn, from Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, May 2019.
• The Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematical Discussions by Margaret Smith and Mary Kay Stein, ISBN: 978-1-68054-016-1

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing [e-mail]. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.