What Is Substantive Conversation - ScribeFire Test

Does classroom talk lead to sustained conversational dialogue between students, and between teachers and students to create or negotiate understanding of subject matter?

Explanation

In classes with substantive conversation there is considerable teacher-students and student-student interaction about the ideas of a substantive topic; the interaction is reciprocal, and it promotes coherent shared understanding. This element describes the extent of talking to learn and to understand in the classroom.

Features of substantive conversation include:

1. INTELLECTUAL SUBSTANCE: The talk is about subject matter in the discipline and encourages critical reasoning such as making distinctions, applying ideas, forming generalizations, raising questions. It moves beyond just the recounting of experiences, facts, definitions, or procedures (e.g., technical language, analytical distinctions and categories being made, levels of differentiations between types and arguments stated, grounds for disagreement stated).
2. DIALOGUE: The conversation involves sharing of ideas and is not completely scripted or controlled by one party (as in teacher-led recitation). Sharing is best illustrated when participants provide extended statements, direct their comments, questions and statements directly to others, redirect and select next speakers.
3. LOGICAL EXTENSION AND SYNTHESIS: The dialogue builds coherently on participants' ideas to promote improved collective understanding of a theme or topic. In short, substantive conversation resembles the kind of sustained exploration of content characteristic of a good seminar where student contributions lead to shared understandings (e.g., teachers and students may make principled topic shifts, may use linking words, make explicit references to previous comments, and may summarize).
4. A SUSTAINED EXCHANGE: This extends beyond a routine IRE (initiate/response/evaluate). This can occur between teacher and students or student and student and involves several consecutive interchanges. Dialogue consists of a sustained and topically related series of linked exchanges between speakers.

In classes where there is little or no substantive conversation, teacher-student interaction typically consists of a lecture with recitation where the teacher deviates very little from delivering information and routine questions; students typically give very short answers. Discussion here may follow the typical IRE pattern: with low-level recall/fact-based questions, short utterance or single-word responses, and further simple questions and/or teacher evaluation statements (e.g., 'yes, good'). This is an extremely routine, teacher centered pattern, that amounts to a 'fill in the blank', or 'guess what's in the teacher's head' format.

Continuum of Practice

Virtually no features of substantive conversation occur during the lesson. Lesson consists principally of either a sustained teacher monologue/lecture and/or a repeated IRE sequence with little variation, or conversation which is not substantive.

• Features B (dialogue) and/or C (logical extension and synthesis) occur and involve two or more sustained exchanges.
  
  
• All features of substantive conversation occur in an ongoing and sustained fashion, extending across almost all of the lesson, with both teachers and students scaffolding the conversation.

Example

A year 8 integrated Maths and Science class was divided into groups. Each group spent a period building animals to certain design specifications. The animals were given names by the students. Discussion was then held about classification systems of the animals. The teacher then distributed a classification system that he had created.

In groups of four the students then moved from table to table where the 15 animals were set up and had discussions about the animals. On a sheet they classified the animals according to the system the teacher had given them. When all the animals had been classified by all groups, the teacher held a whole-group discussion of the classification by each group of each animal. Interesting discussions ensued in respect of different classifications by some of the groups of the same animal.

This discussion covered issues of measurement, including very sophisticated discussion about exactitude, angle of viewing the animals, injured animals, error in measurement generally and its sources and so on. In most instances within these conversations students were initiating the dialogue and other students were providing the frameworks upon which the groups were constructing their collective understandings of the topic.

Content from: Queensland Government Educational Site

Alternative To a Poster Project

There are few educational tasks more tedious than keeping track of several classes worth of poster projects. They are bulky, unportable, many parents hate them, and invariably they fall apart once the Elmer's glue loses its grip.

Now you don't need to "loose your grip"; www.glogster.com/edu is an excellent resource for students to complete an online poster project rich with multimedia and creative opportunities. These projects now become portable, open up new avenues for creativity, appeal to our "21st Century Learners", and can include an audience far beyond the brick and mortar of our classrooms - "the web".

Unless you like getting glitter all over your desk...

Check out this example of a poster or "glog" I created based upon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It used resources readily available on the web, and took about 1/2 an hour to create.

Before I request unblocking it for the students, I am looking for some input on how you might use this resource in your classroom...Comments welcome...

Animoto In the Classroom

Animoto is a cool website that allows you to upload a bunch of pictures or PowerPoint Slides. It mixes them, creates animations, and then balances the animations in relationship to the beat of music. Here is an example:



I am trying to figure out ideas where this can be used in your classes, but I am having trouble discerning a legitimate reason to do so. A reason besides, 'cause its cool...Any comments are welcome...

PSSA Open-Ended Question 1

Julia created the coordinate grid below to identify the locations of her house and her friend Carol’s house. Julia’s house is located at (155, 102). Carol’s house is located at (493, 388).




















A. What are the coordinates of the midpoint between the girls’ houses? Show all your work and explain how you know your answer is correct.

B. There is a straight path between the girls’ houses. If Julia and Carol meet at the midpoint between their houses, what distance would each girl have to walk? Round the answer to the nearest yard. Show all your work and explain how you know your answer is correct.

Please recall that you will receive your grade for this assignment by utilizing the PSSA Open-Ended Math Scoring Rubric...

Blogger-rithems

Of course we all know how literacy across the curriculum is a drum that has been beaten for many years now. Not to say that it isn't important, but how can I bring literacy into my math class that is authentic and engaging to my students?

I can have the students write out procedures in journals, hand out little scraps of paper for students to summarize today's lesson as an exit pass, practice open-ended questions graded by the light of some type of rubric...Yawn...When was the last time you heard a student yell, "Sweet, another math problem where I get to explain the what, how, and why I did each step of some archaic conundrum!" What are these students learning? That they can score a 1 out of 5 when math and literacy cross paths...Do they really digest the red remarks we leave them to help them improve?

We can model the correct outcomes and demonstrate "how its done", but are these students learning how they "solve a problem" or how you "do a problem". Isn’t' literacy about their ability to express their own thoughts and emotions in the written word. Yes, I said emotions. Why can't we bring some emotion into the math class? The question is how?

The reason for all of this ranting is the result of a failure on my part to try to engage students in a way I have never tried before. I asked students to post comments to a written prompt using a blog. It seemed harmless enough, but I don't think I asked a very good question on my first attempt. I asked, "Describe something you really do well. It could be anything from starting up World of Warcraft on your PC to baking your grandma's famous meatloaf; as long as it is a multi-step activity. Not only should you describe each step in detail, but how and why you perform each phase of your activity."

Some of the students did an excellent job. Being located in a very rural community several students posted excellent comments on such items as how saddle their beloved horse; other students gave detailed explanations on how to cook the "World's Greatest Mac and Cheese", how they first learned to swim, etc. I could tell by their enthusiastic comments that some real emotion was exercised.

...but many students missed the point. About half of the comments posted appeared to be stolen out of a cookbook. There was no emotion. The response to "why I did each step" was also missing. How can I classify these "Vulcan-ized" comments to an authentic experience when there were little to no feelings drawn upon? I can see now that an initial failure I presented to the students with was the lack of intrigue or passion I conveyed in my initial posted question. It was dry and boring.

Now I am at a crossroads...Do I bail out now before I invest any more class time into this potentially year-long project, or tough it out? I guess I wouldn't be rambling on and on if I had planned on giving up...but again, what do I do now?

My current thoughts are leading towards replying to each of the student’s comments and asking them to "re-tool" their thoughts and describe some activity they love to do. Hopefully then I can draw some connections between their comments and math literacy. I hesitate to do this until I get responses the students seem to "care" about. What do you think??? What would you do next???

Community Service with Web "to point, oh"

After punching the hell out of my keyboard, I hate Explorer 7.0, a computer miracle occurred. I must have smashed the right keys and a site called Math Is Fun jumped out at me. Come on though; Math is Fun, really? Forgiving such a blatant disregard for a young child's idea of fun, I checked the site out anyway, and behold; the Math Is Fun Help Me Forum.

Before I get any further, I want to bring up the idea of community service for a moment. Beyond being an aweome thing to do, many schools are incorporating community service as a graduation requirement. It is also a necessity to students petitioning and maintaining membership in the National Honor Society. So why not incorporate online collaboration into this.

Any form of tutoring qualifies as community service, but it is usually limited by the buildings the tutors have physical access to. Lets use the strength of a sweet blog to break down these physical barriers, and teach 21st Century skills at the same time. Again, for an example of what this can look like, go to the Math Is Fun Help Me Forum.

Imagine students from your school helping the "mathematically challenged" across the continent creating contacts that could very well last beyond high school. Nice. Think of the number of Facebook/My Space pages kids visit on a regular basis already, and “why” they visit them. The "why" scares me a little bit. Through scholarly pursuits, such as online tutoring, students may change their creepy “why” to more academic/collegial reasons.

I am proposing our district form an online tutoring club with myself in charge of monitorig the web discussions for content accuracy, phishing, bullying, and general nonsense. The biggest problem I foresee at this point is getting the word out to students from other schools once this service becomes available. Any ideas??? Comments welcome…

In the beginning...

Many of the preiminary ideas I plan to post are collected from the myriad of professional development opportunities that have been made available due to the rising demand of Web 2.0 usage in today's school system. My first challenge to all math professionals reading this blog is to begin to investigate and search for as many professional opportunities they can find.

The conundrum here is: much of what I've learned through out the past year was not from the presenters or assignments I had to endure...and trust me using the word endure is being polite. Just view this video to see what I mean...



It was through meeting with other teachers, sharing email addresses, Skype contact info, bitching (a very powerfully underrated collaborative tool...lol), and following up to maintain contact. Throw them questions, share ideas; presentations are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to professional development. I just wish presenters would realize this.

Stay tuned for some tips you can use in your math classroom.