A huge component to math workshop, read more on math workshop here, is math talk. However, getting students to engage in math talk is a whole other story. Especially in kindergarten or first grade. Let’s talk about how to get littles talking about math with math talk sentence starters!
First, What is Math Talk?
Math talk is a term used when referring to the conversations and exploration teachers, parents, and students have about math using math terms. Research shows that math talk is a key component to developing a positive relationship with math. Math talk is not something that comes naturally it is a learned skill that needs practice to master. Let’s jump into how we engage students in math talk.
How to Engage Students in Math Talk
Stated above, math talk is not something that comes naturally it needs to be explicitly taught and practiced. So, how exactly do we teach and practice math talk? I’ve got your back! My biggest tip for engaging kindergarten and first graders in math talk is start small. In my classroom, these lessons start in August. When I am introducing my math workshop, we start working on math talk. Many of us primary teachers give students time to explore manipulatives before we introduce them as tools. This is the perfect time to start math talk. This step starts with you, the teacher, or parent. While students explore, let’s use unifex cubes for example, ask them questions.
- What might a mathmatician use these for?
- How could we use these to solve a math problem?
- How many cubes do you think could fill this container? Why?
- How would you teach someone else to use these cubes?
This takes students from viewing these cubes as building blocks to a tool they can use to help them solve problems. I continue this process for about a month while introducing manipulatives, centers, etc. Once our routines are up and going, we start using math talk during lessons. Here’s where the magic happens.
Math Talk Sentence Starters during Lessons
Once students are more familiar with having to talk about math and their thinking it’s time to bring math talk into lessons. There are a few ways to do this but I am going to share what I do. I use sentence stems to teach students how to talk about math problems. I use these math talk sentence starters speech bubbles for this. I start simple with a stem such as “I knew the answer because…” I introduce the speech bubble with this phrase, we talk about what it means, add the speech bubble to our vocabulary wall and then begin practice using it. I model the phrase each and every time I or we solve a problem together. From this alone, some students will start using it too.
Then, we start practicing it in partners. We will solve a problem, turn and talk and use our new math talk phrase. This process can last a week or two.
Independent Math Talk with Sentence Starters
After we practice math talk sentence starters whole group during our lessons, we begin using them independently. What I mean by this is I model how students can use this during their partner work, group work, math centers, and small group time. Then, we begin practicing that skill. I have special tickets that I give out for hearing math talk that students can save to use in our classroom or school store.
How Long Should this Take?
This entire process can take two weeks to a month. It really depends on the students in your classroom. Remember, slow and steady wins the race. You are teaching 5-7 year olds, this is an advanced skill for them to learn. Give them time to practice. Here’s a break down of the timeline of this process with my most recent class.
- Whole Group Introduction – I would introduce our new stem, model it and then we would use it during lessons for about a week. If the sentence stem was more advanced we would spend longer.
- Independent Practice – Students would practice using our new sentence stem in partners and groups for a week, again 2 weeks if it was a more difficult sentence stem.
- Introduce a New Sentence Stem – After those 2 weeks learning a new sentence stem, I would introduce a new sentence stem and we would repeat the process.
By the end of the school year, you will have laid a great foundation for math talk for your students. As they progress through elementary school more terms and sentence stems will be added creating a well rounded mathematician!
