5 Must-Have Math Talk Resources

“I want noise and plenty of it–productive, purposeful, and meaningful noise–from everyone, students and teachers alike!

I have, quite possibly, the best job ever. I am a 5th grade math teacher. When it comes to teaching math, I found out a long time ago that it is much more powerful for me to listen than to talk. Bottom line, the person doing the talking is the one doing the learning, so our students should be talking more than us.

To start out the school year, I administered a simple math attitude survey to my 5th grade students. One of the questions asked students to rate their comfort level talking about math. The results from my students are shown in the graph. As you can see, the majority of my students don’t feel very comfortable talking about math, and I think that’s probably representative of students (and maybe even teachers!) in general.

The fact is, our standards now demand that students deeply understand the math they are doing and explain and justify their thinking. It’s about the process, not just the product. We simply can’t achieve that goal without academic conversations in our classrooms. Fortunately, there are a great many resources to help us shift the culture in our classrooms from one of working math problems in silence and isolation, to creating an environment of collaborative learning, steeped in rich mathematical discussions. In this post, I’ve listed five resources that have shaped my instructional practices. As you’ll see, they all serve slightly different purposes, but the common theme is that students learn best when they are talking about math. This list is certainly not exhaustive, and I hope you’ll add your favorites in the comments.

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