Latest / Rounding Up / Enacting Talk Moves with Intention with Dr. Todd Hinnenkamp

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Enacting Talk Moves with Intention with Dr. Todd Hinnenkamp · Rounding Up

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All students deserve a classroom rich and meaningful mathematical discourse,
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but what are the talk moves educators can use to bring this goal to life in
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their classrooms? Today,
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we're talking about this question with Todd Hinenkamp from the North Kansas City
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Schools. Whether talk moves are new to you or already a part of your practice,
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this episode will deepen your understanding of the ways they impact your
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classroom community. Before we begin,
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I'd like to offer a quick note to listeners. During this episode,
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we'll be referencing a series of talk moves throughout the conversation.
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You can find a link to these talk moves included in the show notes for this
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episode. Welcome to the podcast, Todd.
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I'm really excited to be chatting with you today.
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I'm excited to be here with you, Mike. Talk through some things.
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Great. So I've heard you present on using talk moves with intention,
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and one of the things that you shared at the start was the idea that talk moves
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advance three aspects of teaching and learning,
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a productive classroom community, student agency,
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and student's mathematical practice. So as a starting point,
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can you unpack that statement for listeners?
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Sure. I think all talk moves with intention contribute to advancing all three of
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those. Maybe some more than others, but all can be impactful in this endeavor.
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And I really think that identifying them or understanding them well upfront is
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super important. So if you unpack productive community first,
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I think about the word productive as an individual word.
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In different situations,
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it means a quality or a power of producing, bringing about results,
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benefits, those types of things.
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And then if you pair that word community alongside,
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I think about the word community as a unified body of individuals,
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an interacting population.
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I even like to think about it as joint ownership or participation.
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When that's present, that's a pretty big deal.
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So I like to think about those two concepts individually and then also
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together.
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So when you think about the productivity word and the community word and then
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pairing them well together, super important. And I think about student agency.
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Specifically the word agency means something pretty powerful that I think we
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need to have in mind.
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When you think about it in a way of like having the capacity or the condition or
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state of acting or even exerting some power in your life.
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I think about students being active in the learning process.
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I think about engagement and motivation and them owning the learning.
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I think oftentimes we see that because they feel like they have the capacity to
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do that and have that agency. So I think about that,
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that being a thing that we would want in every single classroom so they can be
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productive contributors later in life as well.
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So I feel like sometimes there's too many students in classrooms today with
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underdeveloped agencies. So I think if we can go after agency,
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that's pretty powerful as well. And when you think about students math practice,
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super important habits of what we want to develop in students. I mean,
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we're fortunate to have some clarity around those things, those practices,
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thanks to the work of Dr. McCallum and his team more than a decade ago when they
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provided us the standards for mathematical practice.
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But if you think about the word practice alone, it's interesting.
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I've done some research on this.
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I think the transitive verb meaning is to do or perform often
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customarily or maybe habitually transitive verb meetings to pursue something
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actively. Or if you think about it with a noun,
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it's just a usual way of doing something or condition of being proficient
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through a systematic exercise. So I think all those things are,
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if we can get kids to develop their math practice in a way it becomes habitual
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and is really strong within them,
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it's pretty powerful. So I do think it's important that we start with that.
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We can't glaze over these three concepts because I think that right now,
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if you can tie some intentional talk moves to them,
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I think that it can be a pretty powerful lever to student understanding.
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Yeah. You have me thinking about a couple things.
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One of the first things that jumped out as I was listening to you talk is
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there's the what, which are the talk moves,
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but you're really exciting the stage with the why.
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Why do we want to do these things?
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And what I'd like to do is take each one of them in turn.
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So can we first talk about some of the moves that set up productive community
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for learners?
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Yeah. I think all the moves that are on my mind contribute,
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but there's probably a couple that I think go after productive community even
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more so than others. And I would say the student restates move,
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that first move where you're expecting students to repeat or restate in their
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own words what another student shared promotes some really special things.
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I think first it communicates to everyone in the room that we're going to talk
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about math in here.
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We're going to listen to and respectfully consider what others say and think.
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It really upholds my expectation as an educator that we're going to interact
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with and understand the mathematical thinking that's present so that student
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restates is a great one to get going. And I would also offer the think,
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turn and learn move is a highly impactful one as well.
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The general premise here is that you're offering time upfront. Always starting
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with think, you're offering time upfront.
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And what that should be communicating to students is that you have something to
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offer. I'm providing you time to think about it, to organize it,
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so then you're more apt to share it with either your partner or the community.
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It really increases the likelihood that kids have something to contribute.
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And as you literally turn your body and learn from each other,
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and those words are intentional, turn and learn. It opens the door to share,
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to expand your thinking,
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to then refine what you're thinking and build to develop both speaking and
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listening skills that help the community bond become stronger.
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So in the end it says, "I have something to offer here.
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I'm valued through my interactions and I feel like that there's something that
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comes out of that process for kids.".
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You talked about the practice of think, turn, learn.
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And one of the things that jumps out is think,
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because we've often used language like turn and talk and that's in there with
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turn and learn, but think feels really important.
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I wonder if you could say more about why think? Let's just make it explicit.
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Why think?
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Sure. No,
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and I'm not trying to throw shade at turn and talks or anything like that,
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but I do think when we have intention with our moves,
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they're super impactful relative to other opportunities where maybe we're just
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not getting the most out of it.
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So that idea of offering time or providing or ensuring time for kids to think
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upfront, and depending on the situation, that can be 10 seconds,
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that can be 30 seconds,
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where you feel like students have had a chance to internalize what's going on,
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think about what they would say,
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it puts them in an entirely different mode to build a share with somebody else.
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I'm often in classrooms, and if we don't provide that think time,
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you see kids turn and talk to each other,
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and the first part is them still trying to figure out what should be said.
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And it just doesn't seem like it's as impactful or as productive during that
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time as it could be without that think first.
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Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to something you said earlier too,
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when you were describing the value that comes out of restating
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or rephrasing, having a student do that with another student's thinking.
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One of the things that struck me is there were points in time when you were
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talking about that and you were talking about the value for an individual
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student who's in that spot. But I also heard you come back to it and say,
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there's something in this for the group, for the community as well.
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And I wonder if you could unpack a little bit,
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what's in it for the kid when they go through that restating in other students
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or having their idea restated, and then what's in it for the community?
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Sure. Well, let's start with the individual, Mike.
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And I think that with what we know about learning and how much more deeply we
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learn when we internalize something and reflect on it and actually link it to
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our past learning and think about what it means to us is probably the most
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important thing that comes out of that.
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So the student that's restating what another student says,
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they really have to think about what that student said and then internalize it
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and make sense of it in a way where they can actually say it out to the
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community again. That's a big deal.
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So to talk about the impact on the community in that mode, Mike,
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when you get one or two, and maybe you ask for a couple more,
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you now have student thinking in four different forms out in the community
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rather than say one student sharing something and a teacher restating it
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and moving on. And I just love how those moves together
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can cause the thinking to linger in the classroom longer for kids.
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Often when I'm in classrooms,
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the kids actually learn it more when somebody else says it rather than me.
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And it kind of ties to that where like they just need to hear other kids
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thinking and start to process that a little bit more on their level.
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And we get to shore that up too as teachers.
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We can shore up whatever's missing if we need to later.
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But I think the depth that comes from thinking about it,
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putting it out in the community,
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having more kids think about is pretty powerful.
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I think what's cool about that is the idea that there's four or five
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ideas floating around and how different that is than a
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kid says something, the teacher restates it and moves on.
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I might not have made sense of it on the first kid's description or the
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teacher's description, but when those things linger around,
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there's a much better chance that I'm going to make sense of it.
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Yeah. And I agree, Mike.
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And what's really important in that process as well is the first move I always
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talk about is wait. You literally have to wait.
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When the student restates something,
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we've got to let that sit for a little bit for it to really be something that
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other kids can grasp onto and then give them time to process what they heard and
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then ask if someone could restate. At that point,
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it's causing all this cognition in the brain and it's making me think about what
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I understand and what I don't understand about what was said.
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And it just starts to build and make a huge difference over time.
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Yeah. I'm glad you said that because I'm a person who talks to think,
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but that is not true of a lot of folks.
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A lot of people need time to think before they talk.
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And so I think it's really important to recognize that that wait time is
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really an opportunity for mental space. And if we don't do that,
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it actually might fall flat.
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Totally agree.
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I'd see it day in and day out in classrooms I'm in where if we can offer that
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time to let that concept or thinking permeate across the room for a
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little bit longer, it's a whole different outcome.
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Nice.
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I'm wondering if we can pivot and talk a little bit about moves that support
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student agency and their mathematical practice.
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They really do feel like they're kind of interconnected.
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Yeah, I think they are somewhat interconnected as I think about them.
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And I see agency as like a broader concept,
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like really that development of capacity to act or have power in a
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situation. But when you think about math practices,
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thinking about the standards for mathematical practices,
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it's a little more specific.
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So when you think about the math practice of perseverance,
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I think we have to think about the move wait time that I just talked about.
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When used with intention, I think it can communicate to kids,
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I've got confidence in you. You have something to offer.
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I believe in you and that you're capable of contributing here.
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I just think that we have to think about our use of wait time and the
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messages that kids get from that and be careful not to squelch their opportunity
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to grow in those situations.
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Okay. I have a follow-up.
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You're making me think about ways to do wait time well and ways
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to do wait time that might have an unintended consequence.
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So walk me through a really productive use of wait time,
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what the language is that the teacher uses or how they manage what can feel
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uncomfortable for most of us.
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Sure.
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And I will be very upfront that anytime you start to use wait time,
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if you haven't before, there's going to be some discomfort.
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You think about with,
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if you're a person that always wants to fill that space or feel like you need to
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because students aren't quite contributing,
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like then you start to shift your practice to cause there to be a little more
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extended wait time,
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there's going to be some discomfort that plays out in that situation.
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So I think honestly, Mike,
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part of it is having the right question or the right prompt and setting up the
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expectation and upholding it over time.
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I talk a lot about teachers with establishing and maintaining productive
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community. I think that we have to establish it over time and then maintain it.
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And what I mean by that is if you start to use wait time,
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you're establishing that norm in your classroom is that I'm always going to give
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you time to think,
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and that's super important in here because we want to make sure that we get the
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most out of the experience. The maintaining part of it, I believe,
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is where we uphold that over time.
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We don't start to back off if kids don't then share their thinking.
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We can't always fill that space.
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And I think sometimes an inappropriate use of wait time is if we do it pretty
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well, but then we rescue when there's a time that kids aren't sharing something.
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So I do believe that no matter what classroom you're in,
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there is always one kid that can give you at least a nugget that you can go
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with.
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So I think as much as you can wait and try to draw that out before interjecting
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is super important.
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Yeah.
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You make me think about a scenario that I encountered a fair amount when I was
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teaching elementary,
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which was I'd ask a question and there were two or three kids who immediately
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put their hand up.
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There were quite a few that were still thinking and it was really uncomfortable
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for me,
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but I think also for some of the kids who had their hands up that I didn't
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immediately call on them, that I actually waited and let the question marinate.
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And.
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The end product was great.
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I had more kids who had something to say because they had that space,
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but it was a little uncomfortable, especially for those kids who are like,
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"Wait, I know it immediately. Why aren't you calling on me?
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" Yes. And I think it's super important what you just shared, Mike,
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because in our practice,
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we have to be aware of that the day-to-day practices or actions that
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we enact in our lessons, they're impacting everything from community,
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agency, practice.
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All the things that we're talking about today are sometimes just suddenly being
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impacted either positively or negatively.
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And I think the scenario you described about your practice is like you were
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intentional about it. You became aware,
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you realized that there's a handful of kids that I'm probably letting drive the
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discourse maybe more than I need to. And you're right,
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you've got other kids in classrooms that I'm in that are really waiting to talk
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and never have the chance.
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And I do feel like those are the kids that are going to have a hard time staying
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caught up with everybody because they're not getting that opportunity to develop
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some of those habits.
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Yeah. It makes me think about when I was a kid as well. I was not the fast kid,
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right? I was thinking about it, but I was not the first kid with my hand up.
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You've really got me thinking about how wait time is a real subtle way of saying
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you're not necessarily the most competent person just because you have your hand
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up first. There's no added bonus that says like,
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"You're the best just because your hand's up first." Everybody can contribute.
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You might need a little bit of time to process.
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That's super normal in a math class.
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Yes, it is.
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And you go back to what we discussed earlier about being a valued contributor in
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the community and you think about what those kids feel once they experience
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that wait time and then their ideas being the ones that drive the discourse or
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that are highlighted or presented, that's where you draw that in.
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And if you can have 50% of your kids be the ones that are feeling that,
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then you got to shoot for 60 and then 70 and so on.
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But you got to start to expand the number of kids that talk and share and
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restate and do all the things around discourse,
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but wait time is a super powerful tool to do that.
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Another thing that you shared when I saw your presentation was the idea that you
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can pair talk moves in a sequence and that those sequence talk moves can
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have a powerful impact on kids.
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And I'm wondering if you can talk a bit about some of the ways that educators
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can sequence talk moves to have maximum impact.
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Sure. Yeah. And I'm not necessarily suggesting that there is an always or a 100%
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correct way to line them up and sequence them,
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but I do think there's some,
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if you can go after them in particular instances in your professional practice,
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I think it's going to change your practice,
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I think more quickly and more deeply. And the same goes with a lesson.
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I think right off the bat, we first must wait.
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We have to start to build that into our practice where we wait.
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So if we offer a prompt, pose a question, let it sit for a second.
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I always talk about four to six seconds would be about how long you'd want to
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just let it sit for a little bit.
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Then if you got the right question and the right prompt,
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I think you could just say, "Okay,
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now I'm going to give you some time to think and then I'm going to have you turn
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and actually learn with a partner." So I want you to think about the prompt
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that's on the board. What would you share with your partner and literally you
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give them time to think and then you can turn and learn. So at that point,
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I think it's important that you're walking about the community, listening in,
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getting a feel for what's being discussed,
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because I think at that point you can have a feel for maybe what you might want
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to go to next,
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what insight you want to make sure is surfaced that is aligned to the learning
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goal of the day.That's how you get all that headed in the right direction.
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So you got to lean in and figure that out.
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And I think at that point you could ask someone to share. Okay,
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who can share what you and your partner talked about? See what happens,
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see what you get. You can be strategic if nobody offers. You can just say, "Hey,
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would you end up sharing? I listened to what you had.
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Would you mind sharing?" And then I think at that point you could use a,
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do you agree or disagree and why? So here's their thinking on this situation.
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So I want you to really think about it.
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Do you agree with what they're sharing or not?
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And then I'm going to ask you why. Let that sit, give them some time to think,
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let that play out.
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I think at that point you could offer the floor to whoever wants to argue
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about that and try to convince the community that they agree or disagree and
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why. And then I think even, I guess to keep going, Mike,
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I think you could at that point use the tell us more.
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When that student's offering the reasoning on why they agree or disagree and you
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don't feel like it's enough or maybe there's other kids in the room not quite
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understanding where they're going. Okay. So tell us a little bit more.
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Keep going and offer that space and time for them to do that.
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So yeah, there's several ways that you can sequence them,
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but I really think you have to figure out the learning goal,
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be intentional about the discourse and how you can get it headed in the right
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direction and also slow it down enough that there's some depth to it as well.
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We had a guest on earlier this season and he was talking about the importance of
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agree or disagree. He called it pick a side, but I think the idea is the same.
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Oh yeah. Yeah, same concept.
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And I wonder if you could talk about what is it about agree,
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disagree that you think is particularly powerful for kids?
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Sure, Mike. Do you agree and disagree? It does make you take a stand.
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Like you have to understand the situation well enough to be able to say,
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"Hey, I agree with this thinking because ... " fill in the blank.
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I think it puts you in a position where you've got to weigh everything that's
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playing out in the discourse and then actually understand it well
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enough to be able to then communicate about it.
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Your approach may be different than the thinking that was shared,
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but if you can understand it well enough and then state whether you agree or
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disagree and why, that's some pretty deep understanding. I mean,
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there's some high value in that if you can get to that point.
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Absolutely.
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I get the sense that a fair number of these talk moves might start to feel
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pretty organic.
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They might happen almost like muscle memory when an educator starts to use them,
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but you really have me thinking about planning for talk moves.
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Do you have any guidance for an educator who might be trying to think about,
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"Hey,
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I want to purposefully integrate some of these moves into my practice." What
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would it look like to plan for that?
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Sure. I think first of all, when you talk about muscle memory,
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that's a great way to put it.
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Some of these moves may not be strong in a professional practice for a
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person right now,
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but the more you get to using them and trying them out and implementing them and
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seeing what they'll do for productive community agency math practice,
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you're going to start to develop a level of growth in your practice that I think
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is going to be tremendous.
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But as you think about being intentional with them as you plan a lesson and go
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after a particular learning goal for a lesson,
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the one thing that comes to mind for me is really Dr. Peg Smith's work around
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the five practices and orchestrating discussions, right?
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You think about anticipating and then selecting and sequencing and connecting
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for sure all come to mind in that. So I guess I would go as far as saying,
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as we prepare for what students may say or do,
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we can intentionally think about the moves that might be most impactful in
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different scenarios. For instance, let's just say a third grade student,
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you're working on a model to represent multiplication.
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Student draws a model to represent a multiplication scenario.
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You can plan to project or show the model and then simply use the think,
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turn and learn, move. You can show the student thinking,
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ask students to not talk upfront.
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We need to give people individual time to think.
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And then I want you to think about what you see and then I want you to turn and
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learn with your partner about that.
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So I think at that point with that move being used,
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you're going to get a lot of discourse around whether the model is an
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appropriate representation or not.
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I think there's going to be depth in what kids take away from the experience.
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And you can go back to that as like, okay,
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so if I know that a kid says this and just says, "Well,
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it looks like there's this many rows and this many arrays,
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the Tell Us More Move is a great one there. Tell us more.
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What do you mean by that?
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" Then they have to extend to give more depth to their thinking and then refine
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it a little bit more. So I think as you think about the learning goal,
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there's certainly ways that you can think about any of these talk moves and in a
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way where you want to make sure that the right move is being used to get you
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closer to the goal of sense being made and such.
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So yeah.
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I want to come back to something that you touched on in the beginning,
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but it feels like a through line,
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which is these talk moves are about building engagement and math,
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but really they're about so much more.
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What do you see as the long-term payoff for kids who experience this type of a
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learning experience?
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Well,
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it often feels counterintuitive when I'm in schools and talking about these
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things because I think we've shifted into a mode where professional learning
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communities are so honed in on that exact math content
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standard, what do we want kids to know, be able to do? How will we know?
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What are we going to do when they don't?
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And I really believe that the more I'm in these situations, Mike,
23:43
I'm understanding that we can't shift that learning like we want to
23:49
until we deal with some of these that I call them more general pedagogy
23:53
practices, like discourse and talk moves with intention.
23:56
Those are more general practices,
23:59
not a content specific practice teaching kids how to find a common
24:03
denominator so they can add fractions and such.
24:05
But I really think if we can get at some of these general pedagogy
24:10
things to build up community, agency, math practice,
24:15
all those things that I think will transcend time, I often talk about it,
24:19
we're going after something bigger than just the priority standards or the most
24:23
important standards within our state. We're going after things that are deeper,
24:27
bigger,
24:28
pay off more later in life than we may even realize that we're experiencing in
24:32
the moment.
24:33
Yeah. I mean, things like flexibility, problem solving,
24:37
citizenship are all pieces that really jump out when I listen to you talk about
24:40
that, Todd.
24:42
Sure. No, you think about, and I mean,
24:44
as we were talking about productive community earlier, I was offering,
24:47
is there anything different you would want in your classroom or your school?
24:52
You think about the word productive and community,
24:54
can we all come together and think about things in a way where we're
24:59
contributing, we're all valued, we're producing together.
25:03
And that's not something that I think we spend a lot of time talking about in
25:07
schools now that it's so specific to content and how kids do on state
25:11
assessments and such, but these things transcend all that.
25:14
Absolutely.
25:16
We're at that point in time where I could probably keep chatting with you about
25:19
this for hours,
25:21
but you are a busy school educator and you got to get out of here.
25:25
I'm wondering though,
25:26
if you could leave listeners with a thought or a question or maybe a
25:31
nudge related to their practice, what would you share? Sure.
25:35
I first would say I just think it's important to always be reflecting on whose
25:39
talk is driving the experience.
25:42
As you think about everything we've talked about today, Mike,
25:45
is the student talk driving it?
25:47
Is their reasoning driving it or is it ours?
25:50
And I think understanding that these talk moves with intention and what they go
25:55
after and using them consistently with intention,
25:58
it just starts to shift the balance to favor more student to student discourse.
26:03
And I think it presents as in turn, more developed community,
26:07
agency and math practice.
26:09
And I just think that you get more out of that than high quantity of teacher to
26:13
student discourse or student to teacher discourse.
26:16
So I always offer just pick out a move, try it for a week, find a wing person,
26:21
collaborate around that, share ideas. How'd it go? What were your barriers?
26:26
What did you see happening? Just these small shifts I think can create some big
26:30
opportunities for people down the road.
26:33
I think that's a great place to stop. Thank you so much for joining us, Todd.
26:36
It's really been a pleasure chatting.
26:38
Mine as well. Thank you, Mike.
26:42
This podcast is brought to you by the Math Learning Center and the Meyer Math
26:45
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26:47
dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop
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