Revoicing
Classroom Discussions: Using Math Talk to Help Students Learn, Grades 1-6 (Catherine O'Connor, Nancy Canavan Anderson, Suzanne H. Chapin, Toby Gordon, 2003)
Revoicing. (“So you’re saying that it’s an odd number?”)
When students talk about mathematics, it’s often very difficult to understand what they say. Even if their reasoning is sound, it may not appear sound when they try to put their thoughts into words. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell whether what they have said makes sense at all. And if you as the teacher have trouble understanding it, there’s not much hope that the student’s classmates will do any better. Yet given your goals of improving the mathematical think- ing of all students, you cannot give up on an especially unclear student. If the only students whose contributions are taken seriously are those who are easy to understand, few students will ever improve. Deep thinking and powerful reasoning do not always correlate with clear verbal expression.
Therefore, teachers need a talk move that can help them deal with the inevitable lack of clarity of many student contributions. They need a tool that will allow them to interact with the student in a way that will continue to involve that student in clarifying his or her own reasoning. And they need a tool that will help other students continue to follow along in the face of the confusion. One such tool has been called “revoicing.” In a revoicing move, the teacher essentially tries to repeat some or all of what the student has said, and then asks the student to respond and verify whether or not the teacher’s revoicing is correct, as in the dialogue below.
Ms. Davies has given her third graders a series of numbers, and in a whole- group discussion has asked them to say whether the numbers are even or odd. They have established that if you can divide a number by two evenly, then it is an even number. Philipe has tackled the number 24. His contribution is less than completely clear.
Revoicing. (“So you’re saying that it’s an odd number?”)
When students talk about mathematics, it’s often very difficult to understand what they say. Even if their reasoning is sound, it may not appear sound when they try to put their thoughts into words. Sometimes it’s impossible to tell whether what they have said makes sense at all. And if you as the teacher have trouble understanding it, there’s not much hope that the student’s classmates will do any better. Yet given your goals of improving the mathematical think- ing of all students, you cannot give up on an especially unclear student. If the only students whose contributions are taken seriously are those who are easy to understand, few students will ever improve. Deep thinking and powerful reasoning do not always correlate with clear verbal expression.
Therefore, teachers need a talk move that can help them deal with the inevitable lack of clarity of many student contributions. They need a tool that will allow them to interact with the student in a way that will continue to involve that student in clarifying his or her own reasoning. And they need a tool that will help other students continue to follow along in the face of the confusion. One such tool has been called “revoicing.” In a revoicing move, the teacher essentially tries to repeat some or all of what the student has said, and then asks the student to respond and verify whether or not the teacher’s revoicing is correct, as in the dialogue below.
Ms. Davies has given her third graders a series of numbers, and in a whole- group discussion has asked them to say whether the numbers are even or odd. They have established that if you can divide a number by two evenly, then it is an even number. Philipe has tackled the number 24. His contribution is less than completely clear.
After hearing Philipe’s confusing contribution, all Ms. Davies could grasp was that Philipe might be saying that 24 is odd. She hazards a guess in the form of a revoicing move: “So you’re saying that twenty-four is an odd num- ber?” By phrasing this guess as a question, she is essentially asking Philipe if her understanding is correct. By using this move, she gives him a chance to clarify. As it works out, he shows that he did intend to claim that 24 is an odd number, and he gives his reason. By opening this conversational space for Philipe to respond, Ms. Davies has learned that he has a basic misconception about even and odd numbers. She has gained a foothold in the discussion that she did not have after simply hearing Philipe’s first contribution.
While revoicing is especially useful in situations such as that described with Philipe, it’s also an effective move when you understand what a student has said but aren’t sure that the other students in the class understand. Revoicing can make one student’s idea available to others, give them time to hear it again, position a student’s claim with respect to a previous student’s claim in order to create the basis for an ongoing discussion, or focus on a change that has occurred in the discussion. Revoicing provides more “think- ing space” and can help all students track what is going on mathematically.
While revoicing is especially useful in situations such as that described with Philipe, it’s also an effective move when you understand what a student has said but aren’t sure that the other students in the class understand. Revoicing can make one student’s idea available to others, give them time to hear it again, position a student’s claim with respect to a previous student’s claim in order to create the basis for an ongoing discussion, or focus on a change that has occurred in the discussion. Revoicing provides more “think- ing space” and can help all students track what is going on mathematically.
From Askew: Transforming Primary Mathematics
REVOICE:
You have to listen as though hearing their explanation for the first time, and to intervene in ways that will help the children to clarify their explanation, but without taking the explanation away from them. It is easy, through the desire to move things along, to say things like ‘what I think you are trying to say is . . .’ and take over, giving your explanation. Better to say things like:
‘Hang on, you said you did . . . and then (something else). I don’t follow this – how did you get from that first thing to the next?’
or ‘I’m a bit confused. Is anyone else? Can you explain that bit again please?’
REVOICE:
You have to listen as though hearing their explanation for the first time, and to intervene in ways that will help the children to clarify their explanation, but without taking the explanation away from them. It is easy, through the desire to move things along, to say things like ‘what I think you are trying to say is . . .’ and take over, giving your explanation. Better to say things like:
‘Hang on, you said you did . . . and then (something else). I don’t follow this – how did you get from that first thing to the next?’
or ‘I’m a bit confused. Is anyone else? Can you explain that bit again please?’