I have many years experience in 5th grade math. I was often seeking ways to pull in literacy into my math classroom. I pulled in writing through math writing prompts, I saw some amazing writings come from my math students. (as I only taught math all day) Then, I would try and get a book to share with the students to tie our math concept to a book. And there were times this was tricky, but often I was able to get help from the library and get a great book to help bring the two together. The last, probably, three years teaching 5th grade math I ended the year with each of my classes recreating Math Curse.
We would read the book, I always changed the teacher's name to mine- and the science teacher's name to ours. The kids LOVED that! Then we would brainstorm ideas for our book. Each student would have a page they were responsible for writing. They were asked to come up with a math problem of some sort for someone to solve, and the answer had to be given upside down at the bottom of the page. Students would have to have other students check their problem and the solution before they could publish. This was a lot of work- but in the end, very worthwhile! Once the books were completed, I would create a cover page and place them in the school library for all to see!
Anytime I could pull out a book and tie it to a lesson, the students enjoyed it. They often get too narrow minded and think that I only "know" math since that was all I taught. However, I also knew how to read and they thought that was pretty neat!
Not only pulling books into math, but reading strategies for word problems into math was something I often tried to accomplish. Anytime I could cross over with the ELA girls, I would. As it made students realize how it all goes together!
The diversity came in my assignment, with the actual pages created. Some of my students were creating multiplication and division problems, others simple fractions, and others addition and subtraction problems. I knew their abilities, and pushed from there. If I had a stronger student, and every time I did, try to create a basic problem... I would tell them to make it more challenging. My struggling students, I would help brainstorm ways to make it not so overwhelming. I asked students to make the problem multi-step, and my lower students would hear that and panic. After working with them, they would see it is was something they too could handle!
Shea,
ReplyDeleteI love idea of the classroom math book! What a fun and creative way to incorporate literacy. It takes a lot of skill to come up with an effective word problem at that age that other students would be able to understand on their own. It shows kids the importance of word usage. I really like this idea and am going to pass it on to my team teacher. Thanks for sharing!