That's the motivating part. That's what gets them hooked on the mathematics. When you value their unique patterns, you show you also value the student and their ability to think mathematically. The result is the person who is speaking may be making sense of the question but probably not the rest of the class that is listening. Those comments about students needing to make sense of concepts by talking to others, bring us to Category 2.
Competition is a motivator for students to work harder.
Group work, such as cooperative learning groups, meet the cultural preferences of many underrepresented groups. To be competitive, a person has to feel they have a chance of winning. In the meaning section, I referred to translating concepts into different forms such as music, stories, and pictures. We can address students learning styles or intelligences by putting our example and activities into different forms to meet student needs but we can also address their differences and preferences by allowing them to show us what they know in their preferred modality. Mathematics in school can no longer be just computation and as we assess student understanding of concepts, we need to let them show us what they know in multiple ways.