by Sarah Quebec Fuentes

Help your students to engage one another in effective mathematics discourse.

Productive small-group work affords many opportunities for students to develop a deep understanding of mathematics. In S3D: Fostering and Improving Small-Group, Student-to-Student Discourse, classroom teachers will learn how to promote small-group discussions where students engage in rich tasks and advance their mathematical knowledge.

The key to effective classroom discourse is that most of the ideas and their critiques come from the students themselves. This book provides a step-by-step plan of action for creating a classroom in which small groups engage in their own deep mathematical discourse—without the constant intervention of their teacher—and every student’s voice is heard. The S3D process is specifically designed to empower teachers to study their own practice and then learn how to improve their students’ ability to effectively communicate with one another in a small-group setting.

Each step of the process is demonstrated through detailed case studies with actual dialogues of small groups of students engaging in rich mathematics tasks. The book—along with its accompanying material at NCTM’s more4U site—includes all the talk moves, analysis, handouts, and tools that teachers will need to make small-group, student-to-student discourse an effective and essential part of their classroom practice.