Reflections on Conferring

Conferring is purposeful helping aimed at developing students' capacity for learning. Conferring is more than merely providing information. I think of it like this: 

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day (helping)

Teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime (conferring)

I taught a lesson about conferring recently with my pre-service mathematics teachers. Here's what we did, how it went, what I'll change for next time, and what we learned.



What we did:

• After a mini-lesson reviewing the pre-class reading (Ch. 9 of Minds on Mathematics), I had my PSTs practice through a role-playing activity. 
• One PST played the role of student and worked on a challenging math problem (a genuine problem I provided), and two peers observed the 'student' and conferred while acting as the 'teacher'. 

How it went:

• There were too many 'teachers' and not enough 'students'. 
• Authentic conferring includes stepping away afterwards and letting the student work. That didn't happen in today's format. The teachers were basically lurking

What I'll change: Next time, I'll have one or two students play the 'teacher' role, conferring while the rest of the class plays the 'student' role for a short time (10-15 minutes).

• This solves the lurking problem.
• Over a period of several weeks, everyone gets a more authentic shot at conferring. 
• We can develop our understanding over time.

What we learned:

• There's more overlap in the questions for the Research and Coaching phases than I had realized.
• The Research and Coaching phases in Minds on Mathematics contain Questions, but Coaching sometimes requires more than just questions. For example, it might also mean giving a demonstration, making a student aware of their own assumptions, providing a cue, etc.
• When one student finishes a tough problem solving task quickly, others may give up. Maybe provide more problems to work on than time allows so that doesn't happen.
• Good research cues are open and genuine -- "what are you thinking about?", not "what do you do first?" or "what do you not understand?"
• Some effective coaching questions (e.g., "can you draw me a picture of that?") serve two roles: (a) suggesting a strategy for sense-making, and (b) making the student's thinking visible.
• Don't say too much when conferring -- try to figure out what the student needs, trigger the light bulb, ask the student to make explicit why that was helpful, and then get out of the way.