Navigating the Language of Math: Using Active Reading Strategies Ann Wolf TeamUP Professional Educator ann.wolf@cengage.com or awolf5@cnm.edu

Objectives Understand the relationship of math language to reading strategies. Experience using some literacy strategies. Explore ways to incorporate literacy strategies into a math lesson

Do your students feel like this?

Action Steps for Lesson Planning Decide on Key Concepts Provide time for student reflection What responses do you want to elicit from students? Model strategies for students Encourage discussion Check out Adams and Pegg article for text. This is for a math class that has integrated literacy strategies into the course.

Importance of Reading to Math [Students]… learn to use language to focus and work through problems, to communicate ideas coherently and clearly, to organize ideas and structure arguments, to extend their thinking and knowledge to encompass other perspectives and experiences, to understand their own problem-solving and thinking processes as well as those of others and to develop flexibility in representing and interpreting ideas. (Metsisto in Kenney, et.al., 2005)

Literacy Strategies Vocabulary Think Aloud Guided Reading and Notes Questioning Skills Strategic Reading These are the strategies that I want to talk about today. I will share ways to use them in a math classroom. Are any of these strategies familiar to you? If so, share with us in the chat box.

Vocabulary Word Categorization – Frayer Model & Verbal Visual Word Association (VVWA) Students understand the concepts Discussion – more ideas, connections and chance to revise Connect with text to develop conceptual understanding. Includes a visual representation of the terms or concepts.

Build Vocabulary

Guided Reading for Vocabulary You could also offer a reading strategy where the student is given the vocabulary and the page it is found on. They have to provide a definition and then an example of the word in use.

Think Aloud Literacy strategy designed to help students monitor comprehension and direct their thinking as they work through the problem solving process. With teacher modeling, students are “talked through” the thinking processes. Share with students exactly what the instructor is thinking as he/she solve many, many types of problems. Think-alouds have been described as "eavesdropping on someone's thinking." With this strategy, teachers verbalize aloud while reading a selection orally. Their verbalizations include describing things they're doing as they read to monitor their comprehension. The purpose of the think-aloud strategy is to model for students how skilled readers construct meaning from a text. Teachers should demonstrate how good readers monitor their understanding by rereading a sentence, reading ahead to clarify, and/or looking for context clues.

Guided Reading and Notes Guided reading uses the text and then propose questions A guide or skeleton outline that assists in identifying main points in a reading. Interactive way to engage students Both prepared by instructor A sample is provided on the next slide. The handwriting is done by the student.

Guided Reading Activity Reveal the text one paragraph or equation at a time Teacher starts by asking process questions Then teacher will ask students what questions they would ask as more text is revealed.

Fill in the blanks

Concept Mapping Connections to multiple representations of a function Use as a study guide for testing Connections to big ideas Spatial vs linear thinking

Example of concept map Concept map helps students make connections among representations and topics.

Questioning Skills Fosters metacognition Activates prior knowledge Focus on how to comprehend challenging material not on what has been comprehended. Questions asked support strategies used by students during reading.

Strategic Readers Highlight concepts Create concept map – chunk the material for study Understanding of textbook design Arrangement of homework problems (by concepts, examples, etc.)

References Adams, A.E. & Pegg, J. (2012). Teachers’ enactment of content literacy strategies in secondary science and mathematics classes. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(2),151-161. Kenney, J. M., Hancewicz, E., Heuer, J., Metsisto, D., & Tuttle, C. L. (2005). Literacy Strategies for Improving Mathematics Instruction. ASCD. Montis, K.K. (2007). Guided notes: An interactive method for success in secondary and college math classrooms. Focus on Learning Problems in Mathematics, 29(3), 55-68. Shanahan, T. & Shanahan, C. (2012). What is disciplinary literacy and why does it matter. Topics in Language Disorders, 32(1), 7-18.

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