Give Every Student an Opportunity to Discuss Math with Math Memos

I've always considered math classroom discussions more engaging for students when everyone has an opportunity to share their thoughts. Using Math Memos-or recordings of students' thinking through math tasks-is a simple, powerful way for every student to capture their thoughts in an audio recording that can be shared with each other.

Use Voice Memos to capture student thinking in math class as Math Memos

Activity Description

Prepare the Activity

Start with an engaging and accessible task, aligned to the established learning outcomes. Create a series of prompts for the students to consider as they apply their thinking and inquire about the math concept(s). And, ensure each student has Voice Memos on their iPad so they can record their Math Memo throughout the task.

Facilitate the Activity

Share the math task with your students. Arrange the class in pairs so each student will have a discourse partner during the activity.

For each prompt, encourage the students to spend some time organizing their thoughts, then recording their response. After recording, the students should meet with their discourse partner, play their recordings for each other, and discuss the task using one or more of the sentence stems below:

• Our responses were the same because ____ and this means ____.
• Our responses were difference because ____ and this means ____.
• I disagree with what you said about ____ since ____.
• I don't understand what you meant when you said ____.
• Now that you shared ____ I understand ____.

Three step process for creating Math Memos

Using Voice Memos to Record in Parts

Since the students are going to create their Math Memo by recording their thinking to multiple prompts, they should use this process:

1. To start recording, tap record.
2. To stop recording, tap pause.
3. To continue recording, tap resume.

[repeat steps 2 and 3 for each prompt]

To listen to the recording, tap play.

To save, tap done.

To change the name of the recording, tap the recording, then tap the name and type a new one.

Refer to the iPad User Guide for more information about how to Make a Recording in Voice Memos on iPad.

Example Task

One of my favorite math tasks for high school Geometry related to the effects of dimensional change on area and perimeter is Penny Circle by Dan Meyer. The thinking this task requires and the opportunities for mathematical discourse makes Penny Circle a perfect opportunity for the creation of a Math Memo. The task is in Three Act format with an engaging launch that leads to a question or problem (Act One), the need for additional information to solve the problem (Act Two), and the solution or resolution (Act Three).

I recommend you project the videos and images to the whole class and pace them through the activity rather than sharing the files with the students. This will allow you to encourage the students to spend sufficient time thinking about their responses to the prompts and organizing their thoughts before they record. And, it will allow you to gradually reveal the components of the three act tasks, which is the intent of this structure.

Other Tasks

Collection of Three Act Math Tasks by Jon Orr

Collection of Three Act Math Tasks by Kyle Pearce

Are you ready to give each student in your class an opportunity to discuss math? Share how you implement Math Memos in the comments below. And, share your favorite tasks as well!