Notice & Wonder
Accessible Math Talk
What do you notice? What do you wonder?
BIG IDEA:
This strategy makes a mathematical task accessible for all students with these two low-stakes questions; by thinking about them and responding, students gain entry into the context and might get their curiosity piqued.
Taking steps to become familiar with a context and the mathematics that might be involved is making sense of problems (MP1).
Note: Notice and Wonder and I Notice/I Wonder are trademarks of NCTM and the Math Forum.
DIRECTIONS:
Students are shown some media or a mathematical representation. The prompt to students is “What do you notice? What do you wonder?” Students are given a few minutes to write down things they notice and things they wonder. After students have had a chance to write down their responses, the teacher asks several students to share things they noticed and things they wondered; these are recorded by the teacher for all to see. Usually, the teacher steers the conversation to wondering about something mathematical that the class is about to focus on.
This strategy is used frequently in warm-ups but also appears in launches to classroom activities.