Module 10 Strategy Application: Collaborative Conversations

                            Making Content Connections                           

Your Name: Jonathan Miller

 Date:06/24/25

Lesson Goal:

Group discussion to better students’ understanding of polygons

Content Area:

Math (Geometry)

Specific Topic:

Angles of polygons and their properties

Grade

9-10

Estimated Time:

30 min

Strategy 

Talk Tickets

Describe how the strategy is used as a before-during- and/or after-reading activity

(List steps of strategy)

This strategy is best used during the activity to engage all students in the discussion. To begin, the teacher would model the types of questions that students should ask and the appropriate responses to contribute to the conversation. After the modeling, students will be given a set number of “talk tickets” which they must use to contribute to the conversation. The tickets are used to either ask questions, answer their peers, or give their thoughts. Students should use the vocabulary and examples in their contributions to enhance the conversation. Once a student has used all of their tickets, they should still actively listen, take notes, and reflect on the conversation. When there are no more remaining tickets, the teacher steps in and provides feedback on the discussion and answers or clarifies any remaining questions or misconceptions. This strategy is a great way to ensure that all students have the opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions throughout the conversation. It also guarantees that all students, including ELLs, participate. 

Describe how you would incorporate the strategy into a content lesson

(application of strategy)

Students will be shown how to find the sum of the angles for a triangle and a quadrilateral, and then the group discussion will begin to find the sum for polynomials up to a decagon. They would then work together to find the formulas that can find the sum of any polygon, as well as other properties. Students should respond with the names and sum of the angles as their first responses. Then they should work together to look for patterns to develop a formula to find the sum of the interior angles of any polygon. Then they would be asked to develop formulas to find the one interior and one exterior angle of a regular polygon, as well as the sum of the exterior angles. After all of the students have run out of tickets, I would review the formulas they derived and show them any that they were unable to find. As a class, we would go over more examples of how to use the formulas and their applications. 


The strategies discussed in this week's readings are to improve students’ oral academic language skills. One of the strategies was “talk moves”, where students are given sentence starters to help them engage and participate in class discussions. Teachers provide open-ended questions or response queues for students to use throughout the discussion. This helps everyone feel comfortable speaking up and responding to their classmates. Another strategy is “talk tickets” as used in the lesson plan above. This is where students are given a certain number of tickets that they must turn in anytime they ask a question or respond during the discussion. This prevents any one student from dominating the conversation and ensures that everyone participates. This encourages students to speak up when they do know the answers and ask questions when they are confused. Lastly, another strategy that can be used in class is to assign speaking roles. These roles can be things such as summarizer, clarifier, or questioner. This allows students to feel like they have a purpose throughout the lesson and makes them feel more comfortable speaking in front of the class. These roles can be switched daily, so all students participate throughout the entire course. This encourages students to pay attention during lectures and observe the way that other students speak on the topic so they can do the same.


One strategy that I would like to implement in my classroom is to assign roles to students. Often, I have one student who answers all of the questions and one student who asks a lot of questions. This typically causes the other students to fade into the background and not want to speak up. Applying this strategy would help to alleviate that problem. Additionally, I would like to introduce my students to sentence stems to improve their mathematical language skills. Most of the time, students will simply reply with the number answer when called upon and not elaborate further. Introducing them to proper ways to give their answers would allow them to express full thoughts and deepen their understanding of the material.


A question I still have regarding collaborative conversations is how to get students to participate who refuse to go along with the activity. I often hear students respond with “I don’t know” or “I can’t do this”, and then they stop participating altogether. I would like to know how to get these students to buy into what we are doing in class so they can join in the conversation better.



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