Writing Development in the Math Classroom

One of the courses I took as a part of my Masters program focused on literacy and the bilingual student.  When I looked over the syllabus, I was concerned as many of the assignment required writing strategies to be taught in our actual classrooms.  Two thoughts immediately came to mind.  First, how am I going to teach a writing strategy?  The only writing involved in math is solving a problem.   The second thought was, “Great, I’m going to waste valuable instructional time on writing instead of filling in the gaps my students have in math”.  Throughout this course, I have come to realize how shallow and incorrect my initial thoughts were.

Does writing belong in the math classroom?

Yes!  Mathematics is not just about answering problems, or writing numbers.  Math is about thinking.  Math is about problem solving.  And using writing in mathematics will help fine tune a student’s thought process and problem solving skills.  The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) is promoting use writing as part of the mathematics instruction.  “Using writing as a communication medium helps students develop not only their English language arts skills but also their mathematical competencies (McCormick 2010).”

One writing exercise that I ran one of my math intervention classes through was writing a sequence paragraph explaining how they solved a story problem.  To help the students out, I gave a paragraph frame, and let them write out the steps they took to solve a story problem and why.  They then discussed their paragraphs with their table partners.  The rich math discussion that took place in my intervention classroom was awesome.  The writing allowed the students to think about their thinking, and then gave them a framework to discuss their answers.

How does writing in the classroom help with a bilingual student’s language acquisition?

One of the areas that our bilingual students need our help in is building up their academic vocabulary.  Math has a diverse vocabulary that can be confusing for English Language Learners (ELL) or any other student for that matter.  In math we have tables, but they aren’t ones we sit in.  A yard is something we measure with, not play in.  And a right triangle is not always the triangle that is on the right of the page.  To help build this academic language, students need to practice using it in all four of the language domains.

In a traditional math classroom, our ELL students may have the opportunity to practice academic language in listening and reading.  Math classrooms that engage their students in collaborative work and number talks will allow students to also focus on their speaking domain.  But this is not enough.  We need to help our ELL mathematicians practice academic language in their writing domains as well.

Possible activities to promote writing in the classroom.

One activity that should be practiced in every math classroom is math journals.  My intervention students from grades 2-5 all have math journals that they use in my classroom.  Students write the learning and language targets in their journals.  They can take notes on possible strategies to use when solving problems.

Another activity combines Number Talks with the writing.  On Mindset Mondays, I like to do number talks.  A couple of the ones I like are “Notice and Wonder” or “Which One Doesn’t Belong”.  I have the students look at the image that I project, and ask them what they notice and wonder, or which of the pictures don’t belong.  I then ask them to write about it in their journals, and to include their reasons why.  I will include sentence frames on the whiteboard to help scaffold the activity.  I like these two activities as the students combine academic math language with persuasive writing.

Some other possible activities are;

• Read a number talk poem from Greg Tang, and then ask your students to create their own.
• Have your students write their own story problems based on that day’s content, and then have them share with their table partner.
• Have a student write their own goals around math or growth mindset.

As Louis L’Amour so eloquently put it:

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”