You've got some 'splainin' to do...

This week in math…

1. What did I learn?
I have learned that is it much more difficult to explain my thinking than it is to just take what I am told at face value and use it. Especially if I need to have someone besides myself understand what I’m explaining! It’s a skill that I struggle with, but I guess being aware that I am “explaining challenged” is the first step in learning to be better at it. Practice, practice, practice!

And that goes for my students, too. I really like the thought of having the students do as much of the “explaining” as possible, and only add in my own thinking if I absolutely need to. If I follow up with a question instead of an explanation, it serves as an even more effective way to get new ideas out on the table.

2. What are the implications for classroom practice?

One thing that I’ve started doing when I’m teaching a math lesson, or any other lesson for that matter, is to make sure that when I ask a question about how someone solved a particular problem that I get more than one DIFFERENT way of having something explained. Even though I might have followed along with the first explanation and it made perfect sense to me, I can’t assume that it makes perfect sense to everyone. If I can get the kids to explain their thinking in more than one way, I will have a better chance that most of them will have something “click” and make sense to them to.

Yesterday, I had the satisfaction of watching a student realize a misconception in his thinking in the middle of his explanation. He got this “OH” look on his face and then he excitedly backtracked and came up with the right answer. And I could also see a few kids near him get the same look on their faces and then smile. It’s not always that clear when it happens, but if I had been the one trying to “explain”, I bet it wouldn’t have happened nearly so effectively.