Weaving Math and Language Arts Literacy
The article above is from the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) itself. This article describes a five-step process founded by The Algebra Project (AP). This five-step process is very useful for math teachers who are struggling to make the connection between mathematics and language arts. This five-step process uses a shared experience as its base and allows students to build upon it through communication, pictures, and common vocabulary. Step 5 is titled Symbolic Representation and is seen to be the hardest for math teachers to complete. This step allows students to stray away from the one, set language of math and use their common vocabulary when explaining their thinking.
110
Kaylie Herbert
Friday, September 21, 2018
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Chapter 6: How to Use a Textbook
Textbooks, math textbooks in particular, are a complex monster that intimidates students. They include language that is hard to understand at first glance but also language that is difficult to remember 10 minutes later. They are long, hard to understand, and sometimes more confusing than they are helpful. This chapter provides many different strategies to help students better understand the textbooks they are reading. The section of this chapter that I thought was the most interesting was the last section titled “Get a Better Textbook!”. This small section provided a lot of insight for me as an inspiring math teacher.
I know from personal experiences that math textbooks can be super helpful but also very confusing. I remember explicitly that my AP Statistics textbook was one of the most challenging texts I have ever read. Nothing in the textbook ever made sense to me, it was all just black squiggles on a page. I noticed throughout the course of that class that I comprehended the material better when my teacher gave us a different platform to read from other than the textbook. Anything was better than reading that textbook, whether it was a worksheet, story, note page, powerpoint. Anything. I think that if we, as teachers, can adopt different platforms and teach from many different literacy texts, we can do better job of reaching all students no matter their reading level or learning strategy. Subject Matters states that “It’s more important to be vigilant, to be on the lookout for new materials that might suit our students better” (Daniels and Zemelman 201). Moving away from textbooks and into more interesting, relatable texts will engage more students and allow students to better understand more challenging material.
285
Kaylie Herbert
I know from personal experiences that math textbooks can be super helpful but also very confusing. I remember explicitly that my AP Statistics textbook was one of the most challenging texts I have ever read. Nothing in the textbook ever made sense to me, it was all just black squiggles on a page. I noticed throughout the course of that class that I comprehended the material better when my teacher gave us a different platform to read from other than the textbook. Anything was better than reading that textbook, whether it was a worksheet, story, note page, powerpoint. Anything. I think that if we, as teachers, can adopt different platforms and teach from many different literacy texts, we can do better job of reaching all students no matter their reading level or learning strategy. Subject Matters states that “It’s more important to be vigilant, to be on the lookout for new materials that might suit our students better” (Daniels and Zemelman 201). Moving away from textbooks and into more interesting, relatable texts will engage more students and allow students to better understand more challenging material.
285
Kaylie Herbert
Friday, September 7, 2018
Resource Blog #2
http://letsreadmath.com/math-and-childrens-literature/middle-school-mathematics-literature/
The above link will take you to a long list of literature books about different math topics. These books are picture and story books about common math topics that students will be learning about in their appropriate grade level. There are book for grades 3-12 and these books range from multiplication to fractions to statistics and so on. The first book on the list is titled A Gebra Named Al. This book is about Algebra. You would never think that a book about Algebra could be a fun story about a Zebra. But I think it would be fun for middle schoolers to go back to the basics of reading picture and story books to help make Algebra a more relatable and fun topic to learn. This is a good resource for teachers who are struggling to get their students engaged in learning and teachers who are struggling to connect literacy and math.
153
Kaylie Herbert
The above link will take you to a long list of literature books about different math topics. These books are picture and story books about common math topics that students will be learning about in their appropriate grade level. There are book for grades 3-12 and these books range from multiplication to fractions to statistics and so on. The first book on the list is titled A Gebra Named Al. This book is about Algebra. You would never think that a book about Algebra could be a fun story about a Zebra. But I think it would be fun for middle schoolers to go back to the basics of reading picture and story books to help make Algebra a more relatable and fun topic to learn. This is a good resource for teachers who are struggling to get their students engaged in learning and teachers who are struggling to connect literacy and math.
153
Kaylie Herbert
Monday, September 3, 2018
Chapter 11: Help for Struggling Readers
Struggling readers are not just an issue for reading teachers. If a student is struggling with reading and comprehending a word problem in their math class, they probably will not get the correct answer. Struggling readers have a difficulty shuffling through word problems to find the important information and to find out what the question is really asking or just have a hard time focusing. Students will re-read a passage multiple times and still not know what they have read. Many people will not make a connection between language arts and other content areas. However, there is one connection that must be made; if a student is struggling in language arts and/or reading, that student is more than likely struggling in another content area course. This is because reading is one of the foundations of learning. It can difficult for a math, science, or social studies teacher to teach subject material to a struggling reader who cannot truly understand the content area reading material.
Jennifer Hernandez from Downers Grove South describes many steps she takes to help struggling readers. The step that I want to highlight is the listening step. She states that “students can often verbalize much more extensively than they can write, so get them talking and point out that they can now write down what they’ve said” (Zemelman 282). This quote really stood out to me, because students often struggle writing in math. The majority of students will be able to think out and verbalize their way through a problem but when asked to write how they solved the problem, they go blank. I think this is an important strategy to have because it allows students to actually show you what they know and then write it down to the best of their ability.
298
Kaylie Herbert
Jennifer Hernandez from Downers Grove South describes many steps she takes to help struggling readers. The step that I want to highlight is the listening step. She states that “students can often verbalize much more extensively than they can write, so get them talking and point out that they can now write down what they’ve said” (Zemelman 282). This quote really stood out to me, because students often struggle writing in math. The majority of students will be able to think out and verbalize their way through a problem but when asked to write how they solved the problem, they go blank. I think this is an important strategy to have because it allows students to actually show you what they know and then write it down to the best of their ability.
298
Kaylie Herbert
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