Using a Math Huddle to Teach Workshop Skills

If you have been following me for awhile now and reading my posts you already know all about my love for the three-part lesson and math huddles.

Love them!

This year as we are starting up our Math Workshop I decided to try something new and use the same Math Huddle framework to teach a concept that will be the cornerstone of our Math Workshop program....Math Talk!

Here is a picture of the finished Math Huddle board. It's such a nice clean way to organize the student work and create an interactive anchor chart.

This was my class' first experience with a Math Huddle and they did a bang up job (if I do say so myself!). We had been slowing moving through the parts of our Math Workshop and talking a lot about the expectations for each area. 

As the Minds On for this Math Huddle I simply displayed the poster for the Helping Others component of our Math Workshop and had the students turn and talk about what we would be doing during this time. 

Then I posted a simple problem that I thought the students could handle but would still need to take some time to really think about. I also wanted an open-routed problem so that my students would be able to use a variety of strategies to solve it.

BUT here is the most important part....it doesn't really matter what type of problem you use, or if you even talk about the problem, which I didn't. 

The focus of this Math Huddle was actually the math talk that would be happening during the problem solving stage. 

You can see here that I posted all my students' work up on the board but we never actually looked at it. Normally during a Math Huddle I would have students present their work, discuss their strategies and make anecdotal notes on the board to help other students stretch their thinking. 

This time, however, we focused on Math Talk. I posted this anchor chart in the Key Ideas and Highlights section. We had previously completed the section that has the question- "What is good math talk?" but had not yet done the chart at the bottom.

After the students complete their first Math Huddle we discussed their feelings and what they thought of the experience. 

Then we created this Looks Like/ Sounds Like/ Feels Like chart together.

My favourite part...Students loving math!

Sigh.

How do you promote good math talk in your class?