Providing opportunities for students to express ideas in their own words is key to promoting authentic disciplinary engagement and robust conceptual understanding. In this article, we discuss our experiences and observations related to students' informal vocabulary in the context of a middle school probability unit. We noticed that students' informal naming provided critical glimpses into their conceptions and tensions about sample spaces. The use of student‐suggested names also served to compress previous discussions and facilitate higher‐level conceptual thinking in later conversations. We share our experiences with informal naming in one curricular context and conclude with perceived benefits to allowing space for student naming as a broader instructional practice.

中文翻译：

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名字叫什么？利用学生非正式词汇的可能性

为学生提供用自己的话语表达想法的机会，是促进真正的学科参与和扎实的概念理解的关键。在本文中，我们将在中学概率单位的背景下讨论与学生非正式词汇相关的经验和观察。我们注意到，学生的非正式命名为他们对样本空间的观念和紧张局势提供了关键的一瞥。使用学生建议的名字还可以压缩以前的讨论，并在以后的对话中促进更高层次的概念性思考。我们在一个课程环境中分享非正式命名的经验，并以为将学生命名的空间作为一种更广泛的教学实践而带来的明显好处作为结论。