Texas Mathematics Teacher Spring/Summer 2018 - 7

Community-Building Discourse Practices in Math Workshop
Classroom Vignettes
Tessa Delgado, Darla Crockett, and Monica Campbell (names were changed to pseudonyms to ensure anonymity) are
seasoned teaching professionals affiliated with a school district in North West Texas. These teachers implement math
workshop consistently and flexibly to meet the diverse learning needs of their students. We observed Ms. Delgado, Ms.
Crockett, and Ms. Campbell implement a math workshop lesson and present the following classroom vignettes.

Ms. Delgado - 2nd Grade

Ms. Delgado has 10 years of teaching experience and employed math workshop for the past two years. The objective
for the lesson we observed was: Students will solve problems by connecting repeated addition and subtraction to
multiplication and division situations that involve equal groupings and shares. As shown in Table 1, this lesson aligned
with grade-level state standards for the following strands: (a) mathematical process standards and (b) number and
operations (Texas Education Agency, 2012).

Table 1
2nd Grade Math Workshop Lesson and Alignment with Targeted Grade-Level State Standards
Mathematical
Process
Standards

The student uses mathematical processes to acquire and demonstrate mathematical understanding. The student is expected to:
(E) create and use representations to organize, record, and communicate mathematical ideas.
(G) display, explain, and justify mathematical ideas and arguments using precise mathematical language in
written or oral communication.

Number and
Operations

The student applies mathematical process standards to connect repeated addition and subtraction to multiplication and division situations that involve equal groupings and shares. The student is expected to:
(A) model, create, and describe contextual multiplication situations in which equivalent sets of concrete objects
are joined.
(B) model, create, and describe contextual division situations in which a set of concrete objects is separated into
equivalent sets.

Opening and Mini-lesson: (11 minutes)
Ms. Delgado called students to the carpet at the front of the classroom. She used guided practice to solve a division
problem. During this time, Ms. Delgado explained her thinking with talk alouds, facilitated discourse by posing questions
and calling on specific students to respond, and created an anchor chart to scaffold student understandings (see Figure
1). Next, Ms. Delgado handed each student a paper with the problem and facilitated a choral reading of the problem.
Afterwards, she asked students a few questions to ascertain their understanding of the task (e.g., What's important?
What's the question?).

Figure 1. Anchor chart created
during Ms. Delgado's math
workshop lesson.

Work Time: (43 minutes)
* Part I: Small Group Work Time (29 minutes) - Ms. Delgado placed students into pairs, and each pair positioned
themselves at various locations around the classroom to work. During this time, students engaged in a variety
of discourse practices, such as talking with their partners, writing on their papers, and demonstrating problemsolving approaches on small dry erase boards. While students worked, Ms. Delgado moved among pairs and asked
prompting questions (e.g., Okay - what's your plan? How many boxes are there? What do you know? Explain to
me what you did and why.). As student pairs completed the task, they retrieved an iPad and created a brief video
recording to explain their problem-solving process (see Figure 2 on the following page).
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Texas Mathematics Teacher Spring/Summer 2018