REACH 109 ASSIGNMENT 2 STEP UP TO WRITING

I really loved the two articles given for the writing piece of 109. Years ago, I would have never stopped to think to incorporate so much writing into math, but through good training and excellent guidance by my school and my teacher program, I am starting to see the value in doing so. I push my students for oral explanations to their answers which is good, but I also understand that having a time and place for them to process their thinking and express it in written form would also give me great insight into their exact thinking process, their strengths and their weaknesses as mathematicians. I want them not to just give me the answer whether it is right or wrong, but I constantly push them to defend their answer to the "jury" the rest of the class. Going along with pushing them for oral answers, I could continue to expand on that and give them an outlet for writing it down and explaining it through words, sentences, and drawings. I do provide them with some ways in which they can write it down. One of the ways is to write it down in their math journals. Since they are only in First Grade, I have had to provide prompts to get them started, and I have asked them to write in their own words something that they either did today in class or learned, or reviewed that they can share. I provide vocabulary words in their unit assessments in which they have to provide a definition of the word and use it correctly in a math related sentence. I see that I can model more some think alouds and model the writing process more as it relates to their own thinking and answers so that they can see how that proces works and how they might apply it in their own process of understanding concepts in math. I think I could improve by asking this everytime we do an activity and it goes into their notebooks. I could ask for it also by choosing one or two math problems of the day on the board, and then upon going over the answer going a step beyond and modeling my thinking process and writing it on the board. I also think that I can incorporate more writing into their homework assignments even if it is writing down one thing that was easy or difficult about the homework and explaining why it was either easy or difficult. I think there are so many different ways a good teacher can incorporate more writing into math, and I am excited about improving and pushing them more and more in math but also with the literacy piece as it relates to math.