The Collaborative in Action

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K-5 Orchestrating Math Discussions Series (3 of 5)

MONITORING Learning:

Asking the Right Questions at the Right Time

Post 3 of 5 in the Series ‘Orchestrating Math Discussions’

This blog series is inspired by the book 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions by Margaret S. Smith and Mary Kay Stein as well as our own classroom experiences.


In our previous post, we anticipated students’ approaches to solving a task and questions we might pose in response to these approaches. Our next step in orchestrating a productive mathematics discussion is monitoring — the process of gathering real-time data about the ways students are engaging with a task.

 

What is Monitoring?

Monitoring goes beyond checking if students have the “right” answer. Monitoring involves observing students as they work, listening to their conversations, and posing questions to elicit thinking. While monitoring, we can gather information on

  • Strategies students are using,
  • Understandings or misunderstandings that are becoming evident as students’ work,
  • Connections students make between concepts or connections to their prior knowledge.

Monitoring prepares us to make decisions about which students’ work to highlight during the class discussion and how to guide this discussion toward our learning goals.

 

How to Monitor Effectively?

As we monitor, asking the right questions at the right time can uncover students’ ideas, and promote a deeper understanding of the learning goal. In our last post, we anticipated two types of questions to be used during monitoring:

  • Assessing Questions gauge where students are in their understanding. These questions invite students to explain what they are doing and why.
  • Advancing Questions prompt students to move beyond their current approach and think about the task in new or deeper ways. These questions ask students to consider different strategies, justify their reasoning, or connect concepts.

These anticipated questions, as well as the strategies we anticipated, become our roadmap for monitoring. While monitoring, we observe students’ strategies and pose both assessing and advancing questions in response to their strategies. We also record our observations. These recordings help us think ahead to the student work we will use to facilitate the class discussion and reach our learning goal.

 

Monitoring in Action

Think back to Ms. Reames’ jumping contest task and anticipating chart from the previous post in this blog series:

 

Now, let’s drop into Ms. Reames’ classroom to see how she uses the strategies and questions from her anticipating chart to monitor her students.

 

Scenario 1: Direct Modeling with Objects

Student: “I built a row of 18 cubes and a row of 35 cubes. The difference is 17.”

Ms. Reames’ Assessing Question: “How did you use your rows of cubes to find the answer?” This question helps us understand how the student is connecting their model to the mathematical structure of the problem.

Ms. Reames’ Advancing Question: “Is there a way to solve this problem without building rows of cubes?” This question challenges the student to think beyond direct modeling with objects. It may prompt them to consider more efficient strategies like drawing, counting on or using known facts.

 

Scenario 2: Counting On

Student: “I put 18 in my head and counted on until I got to 35.”

Ms. Reames’ Assessing Question: “Why did you choose to count on from 18?” Here, we gain insight into the student’s decision-making process and their understanding of the relationship between 18 and 35.

Ms. Reames’ Advancing Question: “How is your strategy different from Elaina’s strategy? You used counting on and Elaina used counting back. How did both of you get the correct solution?” These questions promote flexibility in thinking. They also focus attention on the relationship between addition and subtraction.

 

Summary

Monitoring is an important practice when orchestrating mathematics discussions because it helps us know how students are working on a task in real-time. By observing and asking questions, we can assess what students understand, uncover misconceptions, and guide them to think more deeply about the mathematics. Monitoring prepares us to facilitate a whole class discussion after students work on the task, and ensures we select the right student work samples for students to build on each other’s ideas and move toward the learning goal. By asking the right questions at the right time, we give students a chance to explore and refine their ideas, setting the stage for a rich mathematics discussion.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series. We will examine four simple steps for selecting and sequencing student work to be shared during the class discussion.


Looking to learn more about questioning? Read the NC2ML Brief Supporting Student Thinking Through Questioning to examine the different types of questions we can pose in the math classroom and their intended goals.