Sunday, April 18, 2010
Writing About Math
Students struggle with math. Students struggle with writing. It would follow then that students would struggle to write about math. A program out of Chicago, called COUNTDOWN, has helped my students to begin writing about math. A simple problem for middle school, such as finding common multiples is proposed in a Venn Diagram setting. Students sort the multiples into the separate sections of the circles - an easy enough task. Students then have to write a paragraph explaining what they did and why. Most students have a very hard time verbally explaining, let alone writing down why they made the decisions they did. I found that I had to start my seventh graders off with sentence prompts so they understood what I meant when I said "explain" why you did what you did. I have always been a proponent of math talk, but math writing has become my new world to conquer. It really helps the students' metacognition.
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I love activities that will allow me to conduct my math lessons as a cross curriculum with English. I was talking to the English teacher on my team (I have cluster concept in my school) last week. We were just discussing how students in my math class were learning "parallel lines", but they were able to associate the use of the word "parallel" in English class.
ReplyDeleteI too have my studetns explain in their own owrds how they would solve aw problem to get them writing about math. You may also want to check with your writing lead for some math prompts. This also helps me to encourage writing across the curriculum.
ReplyDeleteThis is a difficult area for me as well. I have the students use writing by coming up with their own definitions of the vocabulary. They have to define the vocabulary in their own words and explain how the vocabulary will be used.
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