Chaplin, S.H., O’Connor, C., and Anderson, N.C., (2009). Classroom discussions: Using math talk to help students learn. Chapter 9:
Chapter 9 of Classroom discussions: Using math talk to help students learn discusses the proper ways to plan and draft effective math lessons. It gives four components to creating an effective lesson plan, which include identifying the math goals, anticipating confusion, asking questions, and planning the implementation. The chapter also covers the process of generating high-level questions to promote a productive conversation between the students and teacher and the ability to respond, modify, and improvise a lesson as it is being instructed.

Stein, M.K., (2001) Mathematical argumentation: Putting the umph into classroom discussion: Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. 110-112
This article illustrates different techniques for promoting more student involvement in classroom discussions. The techniques used help to decrease the teacher’s instructional “talk and chalk” teaching strategy and increase the students’ involvement in discussing the processes used to find an answer, justifying why their answer is correct, or reasoning why an answer is incorrect. This technique allows students to learn how to defend their answer and learn from other people’s opinions and processes.

Atkins, S. (1999, January). Listening to students: The power of mathematical conversations. Teaching Children Mathematics, 289-295
The main idea that I grasped from this article is the importance of math conversations that take place in the classroom environment. I liked how the author placed importance on the equality between student-student conversations and teacher-student conversations. It is just as beneficial for a teacher to join the conversation, rather than leading it and simply spitting out the information. The article also touches on the idea of promoting a rich conversation between students that is more meaningful and promotes accountability as the students are challenged to be able to justify their answers.

Kazemi, E. (1998, March). Discourse that promotes conceptual understanding. Teaching Children Mathematics, 410-414
Kazemi’s article discussed two different classroom scenarios and the importance of “pressing” students, or making them justify their answers with reasoning rather than simply stating their answer. The two classrooms had a different degree of “pressing” and the students in the classroom with a higher degree of “press” were able to correct their own mistakes and gain a deeper understanding of the processes that they included in the math problems they had.