Debate – Chris Luzniak & Mattie Baker
“My claim is _____, my warrant is _____ .”
Structures:
- Chalk Talk: Posters with questions on them, students respond by writing, no talking allowed.
- Talking points: read more here
- Debate! Argument = claim + warrant
- Soapbox debate: provide class with a debatable prompt, and a minute to think. Then student must stand and state their claim and warrant to the prompt. It’s more fun if you randomly call on students.
- Always, Sometimes, Never statements: students summarize previous idea, then state their argument.
- Point-Counterpoint: use would you rather questions. Students must alternate arguments, so they have to disagree with previous person.
- Table debate: assign student to teams to develop arguments, and then have the teams debate.
How to encourage debate:
- add debatable terms to questions – best, worst, most efficient, should, biggest, smallest, most, weirdest, coolest, always, sometimes, never
- Change boring math into a debate – Given an equation, ask,
- What is the best way to graph this?
- Which number would you change to change the graph the most?
- This graph will never go below the x axis
Full Scale Debate:
Divide the class into 4 teams. Provide students with a carefully constructed scenario and 4 different stance’s to argue (example provided with musician recording contract).
- have a rubric.
- assign students roles (opening argument, , questioner, attacker, defender, closing argument)
- takes about 3 class periods:
- understand the problem and develop a plan
- day research & begin calculations
- finalize arguments
Socratic Seminars:
Students read a variety of texts or resources on a topic, then consider questions in a large group discussion.
examples of questions to consider:
- What are some strengths and weaknesses of each presentation?
- When would each text be appropriate to use?
- What difficulties may students have?
This sounds like a really interesting thing to do in math class. I need to learn more and see it in action so that I can implement this effectively.
Critical thoughts to creating a successful debate culture:
- the accumulation of many intentional, small teacher moves over time sets the culture of student talk
- When you want students to talk to each other, the teacher must SIT DOWN. make yourself small, and not the center of attention. Encourage students to talk to each other. If it is a whole class debate, have the student talking STAND UP. Slowly back out of the center, have students call on their peers.
- Start early
- Keep it simple. Use basic soapbox debate for the first month or two.
- explicitly talk about what active listening looks like – be very specific (not writing, looking at the speaker, knees pointing toward the person speaking…)
- ideally, dedicate about 5 minutes per class 1-2 times per week
- provide structure (argument = claim + warrant ) and verbal cues
- Occasionally, have students do a quick write providing an image and a word bank. This will help students to practice communicating mathematically.
Keynote: Jose Luis Vilson
We need to talk about race with our students and give them a safe space to grapple with their thoughts. In math instruction, the goal is to teach students to grapple with tough problems for which the solution is not already know and work towards a logical and reasonable resolution. This same principal can be applied to social justice issues.
Some questions/statements for students:
- I just want to hear what you have to say
- Why do you feel this way?
- Where is your compassion/empathy?
We need to become comfortable getting uncomfortable and evangelizing for our truths. Avoiding confrontation and being polite can be destructive in the end.
Getting Triggy With It – Kristin Fouss
This session made me think of this Kate Nowak blog post.
She shared a very complete and organized collection of quality, basic stuff. Progressions, lessons, strategies. I can’t wait to use and adapt it for my first year of teaching pre-calc in a while.
Experience Connecting Representations – David Weiss
This structure connects a visual model to more abstract expressions. This could be graphs & equations, trinomials and algebra tiles, quadratic expressions and their factored forms…
Structure:
- post more equations than corresponding visuals (task is to match the visual to the equation/expression)
- provide individual think time – What do you notice?
- Time to discuss with a partner (teacher circulates, listens & asks a pair if they would be willing to present their thoughts to the class)
- display verbal cues:
Presenter
We saw ___ so we connected ____.
_____ matches ______ because ______.
Audience
They noticed ____ so they _____.
Their connection works because ______.
5. Get presenter’s to the front. One can only speak and the other can only point. They explain their thinking for one pair. Keep this light, safe & fun. If a student does not explain clearly enough or missing key elements, just let it go, they will most likely come out in later explanations.
6. Ask a student in the class to re-explain the presenter’s thinking
7. Teacher record thinking while a new students explains.
Repeat from step 5 with a new pair of students.
Once all problems have been paired and described by the class, have the pairs try to create a visual mode for the remaining equation that was not paired to a model
Close by having students complete a written reflection.
Explore Math – Sam Shah
Sam talked about a low stakes high reward assignment that he gives his students. They have to complete 4 or 5 mini explorations on any math topics of interest to them (with incremental due dates) and complete a brief written description or some evidence of what they did.
Johnathan Claydon – Varsity Math
He turned the advanced math classes into a ‘club’ called varsity math and created t-shirts, stickers, party’s and a summer camp to go with it. He also made recruiting posters and placed them at the middle schools in order to motivate students and create a buzz around taking more advanced math classes.
This is a great idea! I recently convinced 10 students at my school to take a more advanced math class and I think I will have to figure out how to adapt this concept to fit my tiny group in an effort to get this group to grow in future years.
Tracy Johnston Zagar’s Keynote – Link to slides
She opened my eyes to recognizing the different skill sets that elementary and secondary teachers have and the importance of valuing these skill sets and why we should try to break down our comfort barriers to get over ourselves and learn from each other.
I think I need to write a whole additional blog post on how individuals’ comfort seeking needs really limit our happiness, growth, empathy and success. (an ongoing theme this conference)
Variable analysis game – Joe Bezaire
The math game with the lame name
The basics of how it works:
- Students guess the rule then they add a line of values that matches the rule.
- Then these students become judges and let their peer know if they got it too.
- Write it as an expression. Make connections between the various student expressions.
This may be a good warm up activity, so I want to be sure to link to it here so that I can find it in the future.
Six Steps to Modeling – Brian Miller & Alex Wilson
- Define the question
- Identify Variables & assumptions
- Develop Model
- Test Model
- Adjust / Improve Model
- Report out
Moody’s Math Modeling Guide – Free Download
In this session we progressed through these steps to develop a model for ranking roller coasters, but the big idea here is more about how to facilitate this process. It would apply well to geometry tasks including 3 act’s such as best square or Mathalicious’ Face Value (my post on this task).
More than Resources – Dylan Kane’s Keynote
Clever Ideas ≠ Coherent Curriculum
We need to be thoughtful and intentional, not just resource collectors.
This resonated with me as I am an avid idea collector, but I struggle with how to make a curriculum coherent. I want to work on criteria for coherence and re-evaluate the content of my current classes.
Crazy Math Teacher Lady 