The SERP 5X8 Card

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The 5x8 Card was generated by a SERP* team working in collaboration with math leaders in the San Francisco and Oakland School Districts.

It is an observation tool to reflect on student behavior and participation. It can be used by teachers, IRFs, Principals, and others as a tool to look at classroom discourse and see its connection to the standards of math practice.
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* Incubated at the National Academy of Sciences, SERP, The Strategic Education Research Partnership, was founded in 2003 to bridge the worlds of education research, practice, and design. The organization is designed to provide the infrastructure to make a coherent and sustained research, development, and implementation program possible. SERP establishes long-term partnerships with school districts addressing critical problems of practice identified by the district partner.
The SERP website includes many suggestions for supporting students in each of these vital actions.

Student Vital Actions

The 5X8 card delineates 7 Student Vital Actions to look for.  It connects each of these actions to principles and the Common Core Standards for Math Practice.
  • All students participate.
  • Students say a second sentence.
  • Students talk about each other’s thinking.
  • Students revise their thinking.
  • Students use academic language.
  • English Learners produce language.
  • Students engage and persevere.
SFUSD Math Teacher Leaders recently shared some strategies for supporting students in each of these vital actions:
All students participate
  • Paraphrase others’ responses
  • Keep a list of which students have positively contributed
  • Design tasks that require all students to participate
  • Allow for non-verbal participation
  • Treat confusion and mistakes as belonging to everyone
  • Push students to articulate what they don’t understand
  • Assign students rotating roles
  • Thoughtfully design group types and sizes
  • Understand and provide for multiple paths to participation
  • Allow students the opportunity to create the classroom norms
  • Use group roles
  • Have students practice asking and answering each other questions
  • Students may only ask the teacher a question if all students in the group have the same question

Students say a 2nd sentence
  • Make reasoning public
  • Ask, “How do you  know the answer makes sense?”
  • Give students time to prepare to share ideas
  • Elicit elaboration, “Can you tell me more?” “Why do you think that?”
  • Teacher says, “You just said ____ and ____. Could you help me understand who these sentences are connected?”\

Students talk about each others’ thinking
  • Report from a think-pair-share
  • Use visual thinking strategies
  • Keep topics engaging
  • Have another students explain a student’s thinking with “because…”
  • Use sentence frames such as, “ I would like to build on that.” and “Can you please clarify/repeat?”
  • Ask, “How is your thinking different from ___?”
  • Encourage connecting ideas
  • Have students share their answers with the group or a partner rather than the whole class
Students revise their thinking
  • Teacher “plays dumb” (I don’t get it) to get students explain more fully
  • Inject new expertise by having a student explain his/her thinking to the group
  • Have a student quote a classmate 
  • Provide revision sessions
  • Have students bring clarity to their thinking by writing about it
  • Have students swap writing and give each other feedback 
  • Model think alouds
  • After groups present, have them go back, synthesize the presented ideas and info and revise their solutions
  • Post revision sentence frames, “I used to think ___, but now I think ___ because ____”
  • Making revision a norm allows students to participate even when they are unsure of their answers

Students use academic language
  • Scaffold academic language with word banks and sentence frames
  • Model language with synonyms and definitions
  • Have students paraphrase each other’s thinking in their own words
  • Teacher paraphrase incorporating academic language
  • Post strategies that have been taught so students to refer to
  • Post vocabulary 
  • Have students restate their everyday language using academic language
  • Provide sentence frames on a ring for individual students
  • Provide academic language mats

English Learners produce language
  • Echo talk
  • Turn and Talk
  • Sentence frames
  • Pictures/non-text supports
  • 3 Read Protocol
  • Students speak, listen, read and write at every lesson
  • Use sentence frames with pictures to explain talk moves

Students engage and perservere
  • Smart isn’t something you are, it’s something you get
  • You can only ask the teacher for help when everyone in the group asks for help
  • You grow your brain when you make a mistake
  • Have challenge problems posted on the board