Six Ways to Get Students Writing in Math Classes
In this article in The Reading Teacher, Brigham Young University educators Brad Wilcox and Eula Ewing Monroe cite research saying that students aren’t doing enough writing in math classes. This is a shame, they say, because there are literacy and math gains to be had by harnessing the power of writing. Wilcox and Monroe have the following suggestions:
• Learning logs – At the beginning of a math class, the teacher asks students to summarize something learned in a previous lesson – for example, a fifth-grade teacher asks students to say what they learned about mean, median, and mode and then has some students share their logs. With practice, students get better and better at these learning log entries, which serve a dual purpose of reviewing previous material, revealing misconceptions and gaps in knowledge, and brushing up writing and vocabulary skills.
• Think-write-share – “Teachers often ask questions and count on having at least one or two students raise their hands,” say the authors. Far better to make every student accountable by asking the whole class to jot down the response to the question – for example, What is an equivalent fraction? – and then calling on one or two students to share their writing, perhaps using a document camera to display them. One teacher thought her class had mastered this concept and was surprised when a think-write-share revealed that a number of students thought equivalent fractions were identical fractions – for example, ¼ = ¼. The teacher had several students share their responses and when the class had seen several that were accurate, she had students respond to the question again.
• Note-taking/note-making – In addition to taking notes, students can be asked to make notes on the content of a lesson. For example, a fifth-grade teacher had students fold a sheet of paper in half, write on the left side a definition of integers with number lines demonstrating the relative size of integer pairs, and then on the right side jot their own reactions and observations. One student wrote, “It is weird that -2 is greater than -5.” This process “encourages students to make connections between new concepts and previously learned material and their personal experiences,” say Wilcox and Monroe.
• Shared writing – A third-grade teacher might wrap up a geometry unit by writing on chart paper words suggested by students – face, edge, vertex, congruent figures, polygons – then writing sentences summing up what was learned in the unit, and finally revising the sentences to sharpen the content.
• Class book – Building on the shared writing, the teacher might assign segments to different students and have them each draft a page for a class book summing up the unit. “Class books provide a sense of audience as well as an opportunity for students to revise and edit their writing,” say Wilcox and Monroe. “Simultaneously, the format invites students to ‘create and use representations to organize, record, and communicate mathematical ideas.’”
• Alphabet books – The teacher assigns each student a letter of the alphabet and has them search for new and complex words in their math textbook, notes, thesaurus, and math dictionary. Each page would contain a meaningful sentence, a pictorial representation, and a real-world connection. With the teacher’s help, students revise and edit their pages and the alphabet book is then assembled and published.
“Integrating Writing and Mathematics” by Brad Wilcox and Eula Ewing Monroe in The Reading Teacher, April 2011 (Vol. 64, #7, p. 521-529),