Listening to Learn is an exciting K–5 digital interview tool from highly respected educators Marilyn Burns and Lynne Zolli. Listening To Learn one-on-one assessments help teachers learn how their students reason numerically—the essential information they need to plan instruction. This blog comes from Marilyn Burns Math, where Marilyn regularly posts blogs, videos, and podcasts to help teachers help students learn math. Marilyn tweets at @mburnsmath.
I love interviewing students to find out how they reason numerically―no paper or pencil, problems that are accessible mentally, with my focus entirely on how they explain their thinking. Here I was listening to learn what Jonah knew about division, and this was one of twelve questions I asked him. Take a look.
About the video: Jonah used almost half of the time in this 46-second clip to sit quietly and think about how to solve the problem of dividing 100 by 3. That felt to me like a long, long time to wait. But I didn’t interrupt Jonah because I noticed he was working to figure out the answer. Jonah then took about the same amount of time to explain how he arrived at the incorrect answer of 33¼.
Notice that I neither corrected Jonah nor let on that his answer wasn’t correct. When I’m interviewing, I focus on listening to understand how students reason. Then, what I’ve learned informs my teaching decisions, where I plan instruction to build on what I’ve learned about what they know to help them think about ideas new to them.
About the stretch during which Jonah was thinking: I describe this as an example of “wait time” in action, an idea that has had a huge impact on my teaching. If you’re interested in learning more about wait time, which was coined by Mary Budd Rowe, check out her 1986 article from the Journal of Teacher Education, “Wait Time: Slowing Down May Be A Way of Speeding Up!”
Thinking Back to a Classroom Experience with 100 ÷ 3
Because of my experience over many years interacting with students about their ideas about 100, I wasn’t surprised by Jonah’s response. Two Ways to Count to Ten is a children’s book I’ve read to many classes across the elementary grades. It’s a retelling of a Liberian folktale written by Ruby Dee and illustrated by Susan Meddaugh.
I then said, “I’m thinking about the number 100. Do you agree that we can count by 1s, 2s, 5s, and 10s and land on 100?”
There was agreement about this.
Then I asked, “What about if we counted by 3s? Would we land on 100?”
What I expected was that they’d either know without having to figure, since 100 is a common benchmark number, or would easily figure out that you couldn’t. What I wasn’t prepared for was that almost all of the students didn’t know without having to figure, most hadn’t ever thought about this, and it was tough for them to reason. Since then, in many other classes, I’ve found that it’s not immediately obvious to students that you won’t land on 100 when counting by 3s.
Using the Video with Another Class
I often “borrow” classes at John Muir Elementary School in San Francisco to try out teaching ideas. After I had interviewed Jonah, I made this teaching plan to try with the Muir fifth graders:
Here are my takeaways from the interview with Jonah, also from the experience with the fifth graders years ago when I read the book, and more recently from my experience with the fifth graders who I asked to write to Jonah:
Letters the Students Wrote to Jonah
Below are some of the students’ letters. I loved reading how they explained their thinking and also how kind they were in their comments.
About Interviewing Students
The problem I asked Jonah to solve is included in one of the ten interviews from Listening to Learn, a K–5 digital interview tool that I’ve created with my colleague Lynne Zolli to help teachers conduct one-on-one math interviews with students. Along with the interviews to help teachers learn how their students reason, Listening to Learn generates reports for guiding instruction, includes an extensive video library (of more than 200 videos), and provides What’s Next? instructional suggestions.
To learn more about Listening To Learn click the button below.