Writing in Math
Connect:
Connect:
Over the past few years I have found that many of my
students were using the thinking strategies, but were unable to name them. This year at the beginning of the year I
found that my students could name ‘schema’ and ‘determining importance’, but
struggled with the actual application of them.
They could activate their background knowledge, but when it came to
determining importance, they thought everything was important! My focus this
year has been ‘What second grade math writing look like?’ and ‘How can math
writing support deeper understanding?’
Extend:
We jumped right into the thinking strategies through
word problems. We began with determining
importance and they really started to narrow down they keywords. I put in place limits for highlighting (4-6
word max) and then they really had to start thinking about which parts were
more important than others. We then
moved onto mental images. This led into
us really focusing on the difference between a math strategy and a thinking
strategy. This is still a work in
progress, but they are starting to see the differences the more they work with
them. Our math writing so far this year
has really focused on mental images. It
took some adjustment in my mindset to see that writing is not just
sentences-especially in younger learners.
We celebrate when they show us their thinking through pictures, numbers,
words-any type of writing. In the past
week we shifted our learning to growth mindset, how we as second graders tackle
tough problems.
Challenge:
My challenge for the next month is to move into
monitoring for meaning. I talked with
Michelle about ways in which to present it to students and what has worked in
the past. Although I am familiar with
this, I find that each year, each class is so different that you just have to
see what works! I really want to narrow
down an anchor chart for this thinking strategy so I think I’ll show the kids
(after our lessons) what I have done in the past and see what they help me come
up with. I want to present it in a way
that makes sense for them and that will be useful and memorable. We also just got our Chromebooks so my
challenge is integrating technology back into my classroom. This year we have had to check out the PC lab
when possible and work around that, now I feel like we have a lot more options
so our workshop time is going to be changing quite a bit over the next few
weeks.
Shannon - I really like how you decided to limit their highlighting so they can focus on what is REALLY important. I notice that in my kiddos, some tend to highlight nearly the entire page. I'm definitely going to take this idea with my own class, when we are annotating not only math writing, but also, annotating texts. Great idea!
ReplyDeleteShannon - I really like how you decided to limit their highlighting so they can focus on what is REALLY important. I notice that in my kiddos, some tend to highlight nearly the entire page. I'm definitely going to take this idea with my own class, when we are annotating not only math writing, but also, annotating texts. Great idea!
ReplyDeleteHmmm, monitoring for meaning in math will be an interesting undertaking. However, the strategies for monitoring for meaning certainly do apply in math, especially asking, "Does this make sense?" Weaving the monitoring strategy into math strategies such as checking for reasonableness, then identifying where the confusion began seems like the right path. I'll be interested to see how you implement this. After all, fifth graders are not that far off from second graders.
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