Math Talk Moves has proven extremely effective at helping students build confidence, language development, and communication skills. You can use it for assistance with any subject but today we will focus on how it works with Math.

Let’s begin by examining the Common Core Standards of mathematical practice.

All students are expected to be able to work within the standards of mathematical practice. There is one in particular, standard three, that is full of language.

Standard three states that students must construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Which means they must:

• Justify their conclusions
• Communicate their ideas
• Respond to arguments

Standard three requires a lot of language skills for your English learners in order to construct viable arguments and be able to critique the reasoning of other students. This is going to open up an area of frustration for many of your English learners since these are language structures they have often not been exposed to.

That’s where Math Talk Moves comes into play. Math Talk Moves is a simple way to offer guideance and help your English learners develop their sentence structure.

Here are the highlights you will focus on with Math Talk Moves:

Revoicing
Revoicing allows for you to validate a student’s response and help them grow in expression by responding back with, “So you’re saying that ____________. Did I get that right?”

This will help them build language through the repetition and help them express how to say it correctly.

Repeating
You can restate and rephrase all the time. Have your students repeat and rephrase things as well. This shows that the students can repeat the big idea without having to come up with the entire idea on their own.

Reasoning
There are certain structures you want to teach for this, like, “Do you agree or disagree?” Make sure they know to do this with respect.

Adding On
Example, “Thank you for that response. Does anyone want to add on to that? Anything else someone can say to expand upon that thought?” It helps students think a little deeper and stretch their thoughts.

Wait time
Very important as English learners are developing the words while trying to express their thoughts. It is about giving the students a little extra time to process their thoughts. Say something like, “Take your time.”

Turn and Talk
Interaction is crucial to language growth. Give students time to work in partnerships that give each students multiple turns to speak. Have partner A, state the argument. Partner B asks the clarifying question to show they understand the statement. Partner A then responds. Partner B agrees or disagrees respectfully. And so forth.

Help your students feel empowered by using and applying Math Talk Moves in your classroom. You can download and share the Math Talk Moves card and put it out in your classroom to remind students of the Talk Moves to be utilize. This will set students free and help them build conversation around math.

And of course, be sure to check out the book I referenced above. It will serve as a great resource on how to implement Talk Moves in your math classroom.