Student-centered learning is a hot topic, and understandably so. Incorporating student work into class discussions not only boosts engagement but has also been shown to positively impact learning (Liljedahl, 2021). However, implementing this approach in the classroom can introduce some practical challenges. How do you display a student’s work in a way that is convenient and does not take up too much valuable class time? And more importantly, how do you do it in a manner that aids student engagement and learning? 

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The first step in fostering student-centered discourse is to get students to show their thinking. With Magma, they are provided with a digital canvas to illustrate their thought processes. The program encourages the students to demonstrate their thinking and celebrates their efforts when they do.

Every action a student takes is transmitted to the teacher in real-time. This enables teachers to quickly identify not only which concepts have been mastered, but also where interventions might be necessary. Importantly, teachers gain access to not just the outcomes but to the entire journey of the students' solution process. This opens a window into the rich variety of thought processes within a classroom, and offers a deeper understanding of how each student arrived to their answer. 

With just a few clicks, teachers can showcase these varied strategies to the rest of the class. To narrow down the focus further, many choose to anonymize the submissions by hiding names and whether the solutions are correct. 

Displaying student work serves multiple purposes: it can showcase diverse problem-solving strategies, celebrate innovative solutions, or illuminate common misunderstandings. Placing the solutions at the front of the classroom signals to the class that their efforts are valued, encouraging the students to delve deeper into clarifying and sharing their thought processes.

At Magma, we love it when students share their thinking and are proud to have played a part in making this more feasible. However, we wanted to offer something more than a mere solution to a logistical problem. Gradually, it started to dawn on us that capturing and preserving every stroke had more potential – it could offer a completely new way of presenting student work! Why settle for static displays when we have the opportunity to showcase the entire thinking process, exactly as it happened?

Playing the full process step-by-step impacts the class’s attention in a few ways. For starters, it directs everyone’s focus towards the same part of the solution, making complex problems less overwhelming by breaking the process down into manageable parts. Imagine – the teacher can play the solution from the start, and pause it when a significant first step has been made. 

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After pausing, the class can have a discussion focused narrowly on the first part of the solution. “How did this student know to make those first steps?”. Once the topic has been explored the playback continues, but before resuming the teacher might take the opportunity to ask, "What do you think will happen next?". 

The students’ predictions might not perfectly reflect the played solution, but that is not the point! The goal here is to get them thinking, and to get them engaged.

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For teachers looking to engage students in math discourse there is no lack of activities to choose from. For more inspiration on how to get started, please see Dr. Leslie Nielsen’s blog posts on supporting discourse by Focusing on Classroom Culture and by Using the 5 Practices for Facilitating Productive Mathematical Discourse. 

‍Resources
Liljedahl, P. (2021). Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning. Corwin. Chapter: How We Consolidate a Lesson in Thinking Classrooms.