What do you see as your strengths and areas of growth for writing in your classroom?
Strengths
Although I only teach math, I attempt to incorporate writing into the class structure. We have a math meeting daily where students write to explain what they think the meaning of a particular vocabulary word is. They also solve a problem of the day. After solving the problem they are asked to give a written response explaning how they arrived at their answer. Often I provide them with a writing prompt to get them started. The prompt is often short and to the point "The answer is ________ because ______________________."
Areas for Growth
I have not been using the writing done by students as a way to measure their level of understanding. After reading the articles from Marilynn Burns, I can appreciate the amount of information that a student's writing can give you into their actual understanding of the concept they are working on. I need to be frequently be reading what students write in math meeting and use that information as a window into their rationale for solving certain problems. Intially I had treated such writing activities as only a tool for students, to help them clarify and organize their thoughts about problems. Now I understand it is a tool for the teacher as well.
What is one thing you can implement from the readings?
I really enjoyed the idea of having students write a short essay about a particular mathematical idea. I think it really forces students to try and grasp a deeper understanding of the procedures they do everyday. Often times we talk about what it means to subtract, or what it means when we're regrouping - but I am not sure that student's retain that information because they themselves are not the ones trying to figure out and put into words what they think is going on. It would also be a useful method of assesment and would allow me to see how I can explain these concepts better. I really felt like the samples Marilynn Burns provided gave me a deep insight to her students and not only what they knew, but how well they understood. I feel like this can be easily incorporated into a homework assignment of sorts.
Which section of Step Up for Writing Would you like?
Asking and Answering Questions: 1-38, 1-39, 1-40.
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2 comments:
Hi Jason,
I think you bring up some interesting challenges-- incorporating writing in math seems like it will be difficult to do effectively. I'm sure it is a very tough balance! I like what you mentioned about using a small paragraph or essay format to CFU on deeper concepts-- I think it could be a very good way for you to determine whether students are grasping the larger concepts or not.
You had asked me about what I see as specific challenges in writing for my kids, and I think to answer that, they're all across the board. It runs the gamut from really poor fine motor control (something I should definitely be working on with those specific kids) to ELL confusion of nouns, verbs and basic sentence structure, etc. By the end of the year, I definitely want them writing a creative, self-generated paragraph, even if they are using the Step-Up-To-Writing format. I'm pretty apprehensive at how they will be at writing 'short stories' during our myth/fables/fairy tales/narrative writing unit in January. Excited, but nervous about how to teach that really well so that their stories don't come out boring for them!
Jason, I was eager to read your blog in particular because as math teachers, I think our situation is different than the others. I like your awareness of what you are doing to tap into the writing piece in math which can be quite challenging especially for the early primary grades like kinder and first. However, it seems that you have established a system by which you are pushing your students to answer their questions and to defend their thinking or reasoning in a written format. I think that we need to incorporate this in a daily way through math journals and on tests and quizzes too. It should become habit that students have to think about how they got the answer but be able to communicate that orally and through their writing. For me story problems are big but I think writing can be used for any problem in math because if the thinking is there then we can tap into that and have them express it in written form as well.
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