Guided Math Conferences Book Study: Chapter 2- The Value of Guided Math Conferences

I am continuing the  summer book study on Guided Math Conferences by author Laney Sammons.  Chapter 2 is being hosted by Hilary of Second Grade is Out of this World.  If you join in and do a post, please comment and I will be sure to head to your blog and check out your post.

This chapter focused on Guided Math Conferences being an effective vehicle for teachers to give formative feedback to students.  She spent time answering the question, What is formative assessment?

She also wrote about how to foster self-assessment in your students.  I really like this and feel it will marry well with my plans to focus on growth mindset in my math classes this year.

Sammons gave Five Strategies for Effective Guided Math Conferences for Assessment:

• Help students develop a clear understanding of their learning goals and how they will know when they meet those goals.
• Guide the conversation with questions to elicit evidence of student learning, both content and process, and/or misconceptions and gaps in foundational knowledge and skills.
• Encourage students to reflect on their mathematical understanding so that they assume ownership of their learning.
• Provide specific feedback to let students know both what they are doing well and what will move them forward in their mathematical learning.
• Use the information gathered during the conference to identify a teaching point to move student learning forward.

(Sammons, Laney. "Five Strategies for Effective Guided Math Conferences for Assessment." Guided Math Conferences. Huntington Beach: Shell Education, 2014. 44-45. Print.)

She then focused on characteristics of effective feedback and establishing student learning goals to promote student accountability.

Review and Reflect

1)  How have the demands for increased rigor and depth in mathematics education affected your teaching?  With the implementation of common core my students are learning concepts in 7th grade that used to be taught in algebra or geometry.  Students are expected to enter 7th grade having mastered decimal and fraction operations (which many still haven't).  We adopted Carnegie Learning which does a great job of developing conceptual understanding using models.  This school year will be my third using this curriculum so my teaching has already been shifted prior to implementing workshop last year.

2)  How does the use of math conferences for formative assessment compare to your current methods of formative assessment?  I use entrance/exit slips and classroom observation as well as many other techniques I have previously blogged about here.  I haven't done much with goal setting and I think that will be a key in using my conferencing time to give students effective and timely feedback based on the learning goals students have set for themselves.

3)  When you identify the "next steps" in learning for individual students in your class, how do you provide the needed instruction?  What are the advantages/disadvantages of that method of instruction?  How does the use of math conferences compare to your current method?  In the past I have used the e-slip data to plan for small group/individual mini lessons or tutorials.  This was great for students to get feedback the next day on what they needed to be working on.  This was primarily skill based so I would like to expand on this to provide more conceptual understanding to students who are still struggling even after the workshop mini lesson.  I think math conferences where I somehow document the next steps will be more beneficial to helping me remember what targeted strategies I may need to use.  Keeping anecdotal notes will be another useful formative assessment for me when doing standards based grading.  I will have more information available on where each individual student is at (on paper, not just in my head)

Guided Math Conferences Book Study- Chapter 1 "Conferring with Young Mathematicians"

I am joining this summer book study on Guided Math Conferences by author Laney Sammons.  Chapter 1 is being hosted by Thinking of Teaching and Brenda of Primary Inspired.  If you join in and do a post, please comment and I will be sure to head to your blog and check out your post.

This chapter started by giving a "Tale of Four Students" where Sammons illustrated how little a multiple choice answer tells us about student understanding, whether correct or wrong.  Open response items give us a clearer picture of student thinking (as long as work is shown).

Math conferences are one-on-one conversations with students about their mathematics work, as one mathematician talking with another. (p 16)

Characteristics of Guided Math Conferences:

• Conferences have a purpose.
• Conferences have a predictable structure.
• Lines of thinking are pursued with students.
• Teachers and students each have conversational roles.
• Students are shown that teachers care about them.

I am really excited to read this book and figure out a predictable structure for conferring with my students.  I love the last point and totally agree that by meeting one-on-one with students it shows you care about their learning and helping them to be successful mathematicians.  The importance of that point cannot be overlooked.

Guided Math Conferences, Math Interviews, and Small-Group Instruction:

• Guided Math Conferences- take about five minutes, they are between the teacher and one student where you focus on what the student is currently working on, and give assessment, feedback, or individual instruction (using a teaching point)
• Math Interviews- last 5-10 minutes, they are between the teacher and one student where you focus in on an instructional task introduced by the teacher and the purpose is for assessment
• Small-Group Instruction- lasts 15-20 minutes, it's between the teacher and 2-6 students where you do a group lesson, this is for group instruction of a focused lesson, assessment, or feedback

Last year I definitely did small group instruction much more that actual conferring.  My small group instruction could be anywhere from 3-15 minutes working with a group, often based on entrance/exit slip data that was primarily skill based. I'm really proud on how much small group instruction I did with my students last year, but I can see room for improvement even on how I did small group mini lessons.  I am so excited that I am getting a kidney table to use for this next year!  

Review and Reflect Questions:

1.   How often are you able to engage your students in one-on-one conversations about their mathematical thinking?   I would say that I do this on a daily basis in my classroom, however, I certainly don't do it everyday with every student.  During the "work time" portion of workshop I go around from group to group listening in on student discourse.  At this time I will sometimes interject when students become stuck.  Most of the time I do it for the whole group, not an individual student.  On MATHia days (our self paced computer program) I tend to me more with students one-on-one if they become stuck on a problem. 

2. What do you think is the most important benefit of math conferences? What are the greatest hurdles to implementing math conferences in your classroom? How could you overcome these hurdles? I think the most important benefit is getting to know where each individual learner is at, and then using that information to give specific feedback and instruction to each individual learner.  The greatest hurdles are time and for me at this point it is creating the structure to do this in a meaningful and timely manner.  Hopefully I will have figured that out by the end of this book.  I can overcome the hurdles by careful planning, both how to structure the conferences, and how they will fit into my math workshop.

3. Think of a student in your class who is struggling with a mathematical concept or skill.  What would you like to know about his or her mathematical thinking? What question would you ask if you decide to confer with this student?  I would want to know the thought process the student is using to solve the problem, but first I would want him to read the problem and tell what it was asking him to do.  I would ask questions: What makes you think that? What is the question this problem is asking? Can you tell me what you are thinking?  I would observe the step by step process they use to solve the problem.  Also before the students began I would have him mark the text of the problem.  This is a disciplinary literacy strategy that we use all the time in my classroom and it is so helpful to focus students on what is pertinent information they need to solve the problem.

I am really looking forward to sharing ideas with others as we complete this summer book study.  I fully implemented workshop in my 7th grade math class last year, but know that conferring was one of the areas I need to really improve on.  I know this book will help me figure it all out as I prepare myself for this coming school year.

Minds on Math Book Study-Chapter 9 "Conferring"

If this is your first time joining our book study please click on the button above and it will link to all previous posts.  Feel free to go back and add a link to any previous chapters.  You can link up your post on Chapter 9 at the bottom of this post.  Please visit the other bloggers who have linked up below and leave them comments.  Lots of great ideas are being posted on other blogs!

Twitter chat update:  Our first twitter chat for our book study Minds on Mathematics Using Workshop Model to Develop Deep Understanding in Grades 4-8 will be this coming Tues night July 30th at 7:00 PM CST, 8:00 PM EST.  We will use the hashtag #momathchat for our chat.  Please join in and feel free to invite any other math teachers.  Anyone is welcome to participate.  Hope many of you are able to join in! If you have never joined a twitter chat  I will be sure to do a blog post (or link some resources) explaining how it all works.  Make sure you have a twitter account if you want to join the chat.

This chapter really gave me lots to think about as I plan to confer with my students this coming school year.  I did some conferring last year, but I didn't use a systematic approach and I did not do a good job of collecting data on students.  I collected data, but I don't think it was meaningful.

I look forward to implementing the three-step approach as I confer with students.  I like the idea of breaking the session into research, coach, reflect/record.  I need to spend some time thinking about the best record keeping system to use while conferring.  I don't know if it makes sense to go digital or not.  Has anyone used a digital system for conferring?  I would be curious to hear about the pros and cons.  I am visualizing that if I used a paper system I would maybe have a separate clipboard for each class hour.  I'm not sure if I would want a separate sheet for each student or not.  I have my workshop class this coming week Tues-Thurs so I will have some dedicated time to focus on everything we have been reading about in our book study.

I do have to say that last year when I conferred with students the class was great about not interrupting. I would have each student come up to the front table to meet with me.  If someone was at the table the other students knew they were not allowed to interrupt for anything short of an emergency.  The students handled it just fine, but I really only conferred on days they were working on the computer based MATHia program.  Doing it this year during work time on challenging tasks might be a different story.

I think it will be important for me to set up the guidelines and expectations for conferring in our classroom right from the beginning of the school year.  What excites me the most is making a connection with each individual students, especially that small percent that rarely volunteer in class.  I will be able to gain valuable information and data that will help me personalize learning for my students.  I think that is one of the key reasons for implementing a workshop model in my classroom.  I'm getting so excited to see how this all works our classroom this fall.