#Made4Math–Reading & writing in Math


Last week I posted research and articles on vocabulary in math, this week I have a topic of reading and writing in math class, including some mathematical poetry. Sounds interesting, right?

by James Henle

This paper offers six different versions of mathematical poems, both traditional and modern. I really liked the fact that it offers Pascal’s Triangle as a modern mathematical poem. A very different way to look at it.

by Patrick Bahls

While the author uses examples from Calculus in this paper, the justifications, descriptions, and everything else about the concepts are applicable to any math classroom. Very well thought out and very thorough treatment of why we should use some poetry in our writing assignments in math class.

by Vicki Urquhart and McREL (an organization)

This 24 page document goes through the research on using writing in math class and then gives strategies and methods to incorporate more writing in the math curriculum. There are some good ideas here, although most of the content is geared towards elementary school concepts.

Finally, some websites that have content related to this topic.

Pat’s blog, (which I love because of the ongoing “this day in math” series) had a posting on Math, Shakespeare and some good ol’ Limericks. Great article, expecially when combined with the poetry articles above.

A college professor, Derek Bruff, had a great posting on How to read a math textbook. This is a skill that is too often not taught, just assumed. Although we all know reading a math textbook is radically different than reading other textbooks.

An entire website dedicated to Writing in Math Classes by Dr. Annalisa Crannell has lots of good resources for the math teacher. Again, it is geared to Calculus, but there is enough there to figure out how to use it in other classes at the high school level as well.

That is all for today. Hopefully, as always, it will help someone.


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