Math Congress: A Teaching Strategy for Rich Dialogue, Sharing, and Critical Thinking

Hello, and welcome to Blog Post #4! 

              In class today we used a strategy for problem solving called the Math Congress. A math congress “is a pedagogical approach in which students present their solutions from their mathematical work completed individually, in pairs, or in small groups, and share and defend their mathematical thinking” (Kotsopoulos & Lee, 2012, p. 1). Once the activity is finished, the students put up their work around the classroom and discussion takes place afterward on the students work. According to Kotsopoulos & Lee (2012), the Math Congress has four key roles in the classroom: To highlight and record key mathematical concepts, to indicate connections between various mathematical strategies, to assist in conceptual development, and to scaffold learning by drawing attention to the efficiency of particular strategies mentioned in the classroom. This strategy can be extremely useful in my future career as a mathematical educator and it involves critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration. Using a Math Congress at the end of a lesson as a summarizing activity will be useful as it encourages group work, and can demonstrate the students thinking, as well as sharing ones thought. It is useful from a teacher’s perspective because it provides a platform for the teacher to guide students’ mathematical thinking towards mathematical concepts and processes (Kotsopoulos & Lee).

              The math problem we used to demonstrate the effectiveness of using a math congress in class is shown below.  The question to the problem was as followed: “Assuming the sequence continues in the same way, how many dots are there at 3 minutes? At 100 minutes? At t minutes?”  Our task was to answer the problem using a visual, words and symbols using 2 different methods. Our teaching wanted us to avoid trying to find a formula right away. We worked in groups to solve the problem together then post our findings on the board. Some of the work displayed in class can be found below. 

            As you can examine from the photos posted of my classmates work, we all had a slightly different way of viewing the problem by using various visual representations. I believe this activity allowed us to expand our viewpoints and got us as future educators to step out of our shell by accepting that other answers are correct and add value to our learning. This activity facilitated rich observation and discussion of mathematical thinking. (Fosnot & Dolk, 2001, p. 1) This process can be easily implemented in the classroom as the “Action” part of the lesson as it allows the students to defend and explain their thinking while the teacher can facilitate a group discussion. Math congress provides an opportunity for students to exchange their ideas and discover new strategies to solve mathematical problems through dialogue, pictures and symbols. 
 

We also had a chance in class to increase our understanding of a “3-Part Lesson Plan”

3-Part Lesson Plan

Before/Getting started:

·    Get the students to be cognitively prepared for the lesson problem by having them think about ideas and strategies they have learned and used before

During/Working on it:

·    The students are actively solving the problem. They work in small groups, in pairs, or individually to solve a problem and record the mathematical thinking they used to develop solutions.

After/ Consolidation and Practice:

·    The teacher strategically co-ordinates student sharing of solutions to the lesson problem, using a mathematical instructional strategy (e.g. math congress or a gallery walk).

       

          A 3-Part Lesson Plan involves the three parts illustrated above. We used a “placemat” strategy which encouraged collaborative thinking amongst our colleagues.  We had to use the three part lesson plan and come up with how we would use the growing dots problem in our classroom. I found this method to be useful as it allowed us as future teachers come up with the best possible way to approach this problem in a real life setting. This can also be a useful tool in our future to use with our colleagues to have consistent teaching and lessons throughout the grade levels. This placemat strategy can also be used for students to work together to promote critical thinking and collaboration amongst classmates. It provides an opportunity for each student to have their individual idea and record their response then come together and combine everyone’s idea to make the best group decision to the posed problem. 

References

Donna Kotsopoulos & Joanne Lee (2012) An Analysis of Math Congress in an Eighth Grade Classroom, Mathematical Thinking and Learning, 14:3, 181-198, DOI: 10.1080/10986065.2012.682958

Fosnot, C.T., & Dolk, M. (2001). Young Mathematicians at Work Constructing Fractions, Decimals, and Percents. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.