Bringing Purpose to "Writing in Math"

My coaching sessions with Michelle, as well as my work on a math newspaper with my inquiry group this year, have been eye opening.  In the past, when we have focused on "writing in math" as a vertical team or staff, I always ended up working with kids on explaining their thinking about a particular math problem.  Lame.  And boring. And lacking real purpose...

Our PD sessions with Michelle inspired our inquiry into what "writing in math" could really look like.  We came up with the idea for a math newspaper, which on it's own wasn't what changed the way I thought about writing in math, but definitely provided some content with which to play around with.

My first go at writing feature articles consisted of telling the kids we needed articles about math and setting them off.  Can you tell I haven't taught writing in a few years?  What they came back with was fine, I suppose.  I didn't have a clear picture of what I wanted, so of course my kids writing didn't reflect anything.

Cue Michelle and her PD on writing inquiry- specifically using mentor texts to help guide students and teach them about specific genres of writing.  I began gathering math comics (my next newspaper assignment) to use as mentor texts in our mini-inquiry with the end goal of writing our own math comics.  Comics are hard to write well (and even harder to actually make funny), but with the help of the mentor comics, my kids came up with some pretty good comics of their own.

As I tackle this month's newspaper assignment, feature articles, I plan to employ this writing inquiry again by gathering mentor texts, analyzing them with kids, and then attempting our own in the style of the mentor texts.  Hopefully these will end up more successful than those we wrote just a few months ago.

T'was the night before Shark Tank....

Wow!  I forgot how multi-faceted teaching writing is.  Through my struggles the past two weeks, I have really had a lot of fun as a teacher.  My kids have been really engaged in this project, which is making learning how to write persuasively a little less painful for most of them.

I ended up finding three mentor texts after what seemed like hours of searching the web.  We read the three texts (I read, they followed along for the sake of time) with the question "How do writers convince their readers to agree with them?" in mind.  Through a series of turn and talks, as well as small group discussions, we came up with this anchor chart to guide our thinking.

The other chart we made from these mentor texts was what we noticed about author's craft in the three pieces.  This process was much harder for them.  They struggled "reading like a writer" as opposed to reading the content of the pieces.  After much conferring, collaborating and guidance we came up with this chart.

With these two charts as our checklists of sorts, we set out to create our own persuasive writing pieces to support their various problem solving magnet creations.  If you are super interested in how they turned out, you can read them (after March 3rd that is!)  on our blog here. 

Persuasive Writing Through Shark Tank

A few months ago I borrowed this idea from a friend who teaches 3rd grade STEM classes in another district- SHARK TANK!  You know, like the tv show.  The kids had to solve a simple problem using magnets and then share their idea/invention in the format of the popular show.  Sounded like a great idea, so I did what I normally do- tell Brenna and then ask her how we will make it work.

I knew it would provide a high engagement factor, but that was about all I had going for me until Michelle shared her argument and persuasive writing concepts with us the past two Fridays.  Now things are starting to take shape a bit.  (It also helped that Michelle was kind enough to have a planning conversation with me.)

I narrowed it down to these basic writing goals: a persuasive piece both in an oral presentation form (Shark Tank Pitch) and a blog post (persuasive paragraph).

And these science based success indicators:  kids will be able to a craft a solution that is reasonably scientific and shows an understanding of the nuances of magnets and the relationship to energy (ie. attraction and repulsion, conductors for magnetic force, and limitation of magnets and force.  As well as be able to use scientific evidence and persuasive techniques to persuade a reader/listener.

Most importantly I realized that I need to SLOW DOWN this process.  I have adjusted my timeline to include the use of mentor texts and videos.  The extra week I've given myself will allow me to more purposefully plan the critical mini-lessons to include modeling and mentors.