At the start of the semester, which was my very first
semester in the Middle Grades Program, I was sort of confused and annoyed about
having to take a literature class for my major. After all, my emphases are in
mathematics and science…so why would a literature class be at all relevant to
those subjects?
But I was greatly mistaken. Taking a course about Content
Area Literacy is necessary for all content-area teacher candidates, not just those
pursuing a language arts emphasis. I had always believed that math and science
were very different, unrelated spheres than language arts or even social
studies. So, for example, a student who excels in their math and science
classes might be less advanced in their language arts courses, and vice versa.
But this concept is a complete myth. Through this course, I learned that a
student’s reading abilities affect their success in every content area, not
just in their language arts class. Therefore, every teacher should be
strengthening their students reading skills as well as teaching them strategies
to make into better readers. Because after all, there’s some form of reading in
every content area.
My primary emphasis is mathematics, so I tend to always
refer to my future classroom as a math classroom. That being said, I’ve come to
realize that reading is absolutely going to be a part of my math classroom;
therefore, I’ve got to be prepared to address how to approach the math readings
and make sense of them. The two main math texts that I have identified as the
most challenging are textbooks and word problems.
Although I may not use it often, I will very likely have a
math textbook set for my class, which presents challenges to every reader in
the classroom, not just the struggling readers. As the National Council of Teachersof Mathematics explains in their article, Anticipation Guides: Reading forMathematics Understanding, math textbooks contain tons of precise symbols and
unfamiliar vocabulary, longer and more complex sentence structure, and yet very
little redundancy to help with interpretation. Also, math textbooks are often
written at a level at least more than one grade level above the targeted
students. So of course students are going to struggle to read math textbooks!
As a teacher, I’ve got to prepare them to read this textbook language. Some
strategies I could introduce to my students would be coding the text, annotating
the text, multicolumn notes. In each of these, the students will be forced to
more carefully read the texts and or/produce a guide for their comprehension. I
also believe that thinking aloud a page out of the textbook myself would
greatly benefit my students. When you model a strategy, the students have
something to emulate.
But for struggling readers, the math text that is even more
of a burden is word problems. Word problems expect students to make sense of a
scenario made up of words, and then translate it into numbers and equations…but
if students are struggling to read the words, how on earth could they possibly
make sense of the math? Or, if they understand the math but not the context
within the reading, then they have missed the point of the word problem. There
are many reasons why students struggle to read and comprehend math word
problems, but a lot of the reasons for difficulty are correlated with the types
of struggling readers who are approaching the text. A student with Attention
Deficit Disorder might be struggling to keep their attention on the long, wordy
problem. A student who has anxiety about math may get very stressed and overwhelmed
with the length and wordiness as well. A student who believes that he/she can
speed read through the text may overlook the little details necessary for
solving the problem correctly. And a student whose first language was not
English may not recognize certain words, phrases, or situations due to the
language barrier and/or cultural differences. For example, I found this really
impactful video about an ELL Immersion student in a math class, shown from the
perspective of this student:
As seen in this short video, an ELL student may comprehend
the mathematics, but the word problem’s language (and even his teacher’s language)
is barring him from success. In situations like these, I think the partner
reading strategy could be so beneficial for my students. ELL students, or even
other struggling reading students should be paired up to help one another,
instead of having to struggle through on their own or with occasional help.
(758...oops)
Emily
P.S, Thanks for an awesome semester, Mr. Robinson!
