One of the things you would see if you were to observe my mathematics teaching is that we spend a lot of time reading aloud, decoding, and rereading all kinds of texts.
A LOT of time.
We read word problems and problem set-ups aloud, we read instructions aloud, and we read texts by mathematicians and scientists aloud. We read texts and scripts that I have written out loud and we read texts that students have written out loud. We read boring stuff and serious stuff and whatever silly stuff I can sneak into an investigation set-up.
And what this has taught me is that all students need to do a lot more reading aloud in math class.
Research shows that kids whose parents read to them early become fluent and confident lifelong readers. I used to think that only high-poverty kids don't get much opportunity to be read to, but now I can confidently tell you that kids in wealthy communities need this too. Even kids with many advantages whose parents did and/or do read to them early and diligently are often still weak readers by the eighth, ninth, or tenth grades.
And what I have learned is that even well-trained students need and benefit from regular and intensive practice in reading aloud in their math class.
They need more than just primitive "reading comprehension" skills. They need practice in what gets called "textual response and analysis" in the ELA standards, in spite of the fact that these are actually just fundamental literacy skills for anyone who hopes to gain access to the kinds of career opportunities that provide socio-economic mobility.
Reading aloud, like counting circles, is a bedrock practice for students. It is often a great leveler and differentiator in the math classroom. When I announce that I need six readers for the overview we are going to dissect to begin a class, I routinely get three times as many volunteers as that. Even my most discouraged math learners will volunteer to read aloud. Reading is a window into another world. And it's an activity in which every learner can be actively included. It's an equal opportunity invitation into the concert of intention.
And as I often tell my students, much of adult life consists of responding to badly written instructions for ill-defined tasks. Doing your taxes, interpreting and responding to job posting, following your boss' instructions, interpreting conflicting instructions in e-mail sent by customers or clients with competing or downright troubling motivations.
So this is my plea to everybody to consider adding reading aloud as one more practice in your quest to introduce low-barrier-to-entry, high-ceiling problem solving in your classroom.
So many of my students have talked about the panic of reading aloud ... do you take volunteers, or go methodically, or random calling? Wondering what you do for those who struggle or are embarrassed. Especially because I can totally see the value in doing this in a content class!
ReplyDeleteI only take volunteers, because the point of this is to improve our collective receptivity to reading and listening. Those who listen are also actively contributing! Plus they are receiving modeling in how others deal with reading aloud, making mistakes, and not experiencing the end of the world as a result. My goal is to normalize reading out loud as an activity, not to shame anybody.
Delete- Elizabeth (@cheesemonkeysf)
Tuesday my student teacher is reading "If I Were One Inch Tall" (or something close to that title) by Shel Silverstein to start our Proportions unit (thank you Fawn Nguyen). The next day they'll write their poems and read them to their groups on Thursday & Friday as warm ups. I think lots more of reading is needed too!
ReplyDeleteThis is brilliant! I am definitely going to use this too in our proportions unit. Thanks for commenting and sharing these ideas!
DeleteThis is such a true and necessary post. Kids get into math class and either sigh in relief because there's no reading or cringe because all we're doing is problems. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi, I'm posting for the MTBoS challenge (but also because this post is interesting to me!) I teach all English learners, so we do some reading out loud already, I'm curious what you actually do to teach response and analysis (as opposed to just getting a kid to drone out the words). Could you give an example?
ReplyDeleteI start the same way I would with an English class or a writing class. Somebody does some reading and then I guide them through an inquiry into the text. I usually grab onto a vocabulary word in the text first, asking, What does that mean? Does anybody know?
DeleteIf somebody knows, then great. If nobody knows, then somebody has to look it up (using whatever we've got at hand — hard copy dictionary or dictionary.com. I repeat key phrases several times as we discuss this, reinforcing whatever great things kids say. Sometimes I'll do Think-Pair-Share first in response to "What does that mean?" or I'll have them write down two possible meanings and one totally ridiculous meaning (just to get the juices flowing).
When it's time to move on, I'll restate what I now understand the passage to mean, based on the shared understanding of the group.
This is a very old, but very effective method of modeling close reading and textual analysis by way of modeling. It's different from "lecture" in that I am revealing and inviting students into my own reading process.
Eventually, students start doing this for themselves and in their table groups.
I think the biggest thing kids need to understand about this is that EVERYBODY has to slow down and interrogate the text when we are reading something challenging. Speed-readers miss too much!
Hope that is helpful. Thanks for commenting.
- Elizabeth (@cheesemonkeysf)
I found your blog as part of the MTBoS. I 've taught multiple subjects and multiple grade levels and now teach only math to 7th and 8th graders. I like your views regarding reading in the math class. Students need to wrestle with the language of the problems before they can struggle with the content. Just last week as I was having students read inequalities to me as we were graphing, they couldn't read the symbol > or < It was going to be impossible to graph the solutions if they didn't understand the word behind the symbol.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post.
Students think they are reading when they are just skimming. I'm on our school's SIP committee and yesterday we rolled out to the staff our plans to incorporate 7 reading strategies across the curriculum. Each month the staff is being asked to incorporate the "strategy of the month" by first preparing and conducting a think-aloud then following it up with students practicing that skill. We'll collect "data" (their annotations) to determine to what extent they are implementing the strategy, then consider ways for students to improve the use that strategy.
ReplyDeleteOur first strategy is monitoring--which could be thought of as a form of persevering. I might introduce the monitoring think aloud using a section from the textbook on product exponent rules--a concept we recently completed. Then the students practice monitoring using a photocopied section of the quotient exponent rules. I'm excited about it because I haven't done a very good job of teaching students how to read in math.
Your post is very timely for me.