Literacy in Mathematics

            I was really excited when I learned that I could choose any video or podcast to listen to for this blog. I did a lot of research watching clips of different videos and reading about different podcasts until I stumbled upon the podcast, Connecting Literacy and Math. In this podcast the author, Kassia Omohundro Wedekind, of the book Math Exchanges: Guiding Young Mathematicians in small group meetings, talks about the connections between reading, writing, and math. The first thing she points out is how important talking is in math class. Every math teacher needs to establish how small group and class discussion works in the classroom at the beginning of the year. Students need to discuss and share their different strategies for problem solving. At the end of each lesson it is very helpful to have a class discussion reflecting back on the lesson and where they found some things difficult and what helped them. Another good idea Kassia Omohundro Wedekind talked about it is having the students always writing about and drawing their strategies and then swapping work with another student and they can discuss what they found different. I also loved how she explained math as story telling. This helps students become literate in mathematics and understand how it is helpful in real life. Society is very complex and is continuing to become more complex everyday. Children need to develop more complex relationships with language and problem solving. Connecting math and story telling is very important. Students need to be able to retell a math problem and show how to solve it. Teach them to see math as a story and how it is in our world and occurring all around us. When you take language out of math you are taking out the reason why you are solving and the context. I think this is great podcast and if you want to become a stronger literacy teacher in the mathematics area then I highly recommend it.

            As I have continued to read the Tovani text I become more in love with this book. In chapter three she explained a time when she went to a math class and showed students how to read the math textbooks. Math teachers sat in on the lesson even though they all thought it was a waste of time. She wanted to show how textbooks have certain features that are designed to make reading easier for those who struggle at it. As she went through one of the pages she wrote notes on the side of thoughts that she had or something she might not have understood in the text. She came across a figure that consisted of math symbols and wrote down beside it, “What is this for? Is it a formula from a previous chapter that I didn’t learn? Now what?” One of the teachers stood up and said, “that is not a formula. That’s just a graphic, some artwork. It’s found throughout the book.” She flipped through the book and pointed out every time she saw that same graphic. Then they realized it appeared every time a new mathematical property was introduced. I thought this example that Tovani shared was excellent because it really does show how important it is to know how to read your textbook. Textbooks are there to help and I think all teachers should go over with their student’s different strategies to read their textbooks. 

            I have been thinking about different ways to incorporate content literacy into a math classroom. I have created an example that would be used as a “starter” to begin a lesson. I decided to use an activity that was for 8^th grade level math and the standard is MCC8.F.5 Describe qualitatively the functional relationship between two quantities by analyzing a graph (e.g., where the function is increasing or decreasing, linear or nonlinear). Sketch a graph that exhibits the qualitative features of a function that has been described verbally. Here is the problem I would give the class:

I thought this was a good problem because it gives the students the opportunity to write a story that goes along with a mathematical graph. I think it is very helpful and useful way to incorporate content literacy into the math classroom because you have them writing their own stories and then reading/listening to other students stories.