Chapter 3 opened my eyes to the fact that teaching reading in math may actually help students in other disciplines read analytically. I am one of those people who say they are a math person because they do not like words, but I feel confident in my abilities to solve word problems in math. I think that modeling how to solve word problems for the whole class would be an easy way to show students what I experience when presented with these problems. They can see how I approach the problem, my thoughts throughout, and when and how I connect this problem to something with which I am already familiar. Graphs and charts also give students struggles. If I took the time to help them truly understand the information in the chart or graph, they may perform much better on standardized tests like the ACT as well as other classes like science or social studies.
I have vivid memories of my history class in high school assigning pages and pages of reading from the textbook each night, and thankfully one of my previous teachers had shown me how to take Cornell notes. This was the only way I knew how to tackle these readings, but I never thought introducing different texts that were more accessible could have made our lives so much easier. Creating text sets seems to be an interesting way to give students the chance to see math outside of the classroom. I have seen one teacher have a "Math in the News" bulletin board where students could bring in articles from the newspaper or a magazine to hang up for others to read. This helps promote reading in math as well as seeing connections to the real world. I feel like having engaging strategies like this bulletin board or text sets will make math seem less intimidating to those who feel nervous about coming to class.
I never considered the idea that students could learn to read analytically and apply that to other disciplines. Since you mentioned that in your response to the reading, I can see how students can use reading techniques they learn in math in other subjects. Thanks for bringing that to light. The big take away I had from the article is that I, as a teacher, am also responsible for teaching students to read. More specifically, how to read math. Although this generally occurs inadvertently I will definitely put more focus on reading in mathematics in the future. PS. Thanks for mentioning math articles...this is something I may start to introduce next semester.
ReplyDeleteJake--
ReplyDeleteI felt the same way about Chapter 3! I had never truly considered that explaining how I approach math problems could help students in reading and other content areas. I agree that modeling your approach is the best way to demonstrate this. I definitely feel teaching this skill will help with standardized testing. Since students have to complete these tests individually, they need to be taught how to dissect and approach each problem. Nice!