The End is Here.

The end is Near Here.

I am very happy I was able to take this course. My mind has been opened to new ideas about literacy as it applies to mathematics. When I first heard I was going to have to take a course on literacy instruction, being a math ed major, I was upset. I thought this course was not going to apply to me at all. Boy was I wrong!

Literacy is a huge part of mathematics! Students will benefit greatly as I incorporate different comprehension strategies into my instruction. Two huge strategies are helping students make connections to prior knowledge, and make predictions about outcomes. Mathematics builds on prior knowledge. It seems that everything you learn in math builds on each other. By helping students understand how something in math connects to their previous knowledge, comprehension will increase. 

Another thing that I think is important in mathematics is vocabulary instruction. The world of mathematics presents students with plenty of encounters with new and foreign words. Mathematics is itself a new language. If I can help students unlock the language of mathematics, then they will understand it better. (Honestly, have you ever used the words integer or prime factorization outside of a math classroom?) I like the concept of choosing 7-12 keywords in math and helping students understand those words. Students will not be able to find the least common multiple of two numbers if they do not know what a multiple is. What is a divisor? I hope that my students will be able to understand the language of mathematics.

Also, I really enjoyed doing the self-selected project. I interviewed a student about his math experiences. I asked him what he thought when I said “Math book.” He said, “Big boring book that weighs my backpack down.” I laughed and agreed with him to a point. Besides the few math books I got as a child, my only experience with a math book revolved around big boring books that you wouldn’t just pick up for a late night leisurely read. However, when doing the text set and book talk, I was introduced to a huge world of awesome math books. As “geeky” as it may sound, I would pick up many of those books for a leisurely read. Some of the books include Guesstimation: Solving the World's Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin, Basketball: the Math of the Game, The Number Devil: a Mathematical Adventure, The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets, and Math Girls. I told the student I interviewed about these books and he was genuinely interested in a couple of them. I told him I planned to get these books and put them in a classroom library. He said he would “actually check them out.” 

For your viewing pleasure...Check out this video for a cool math trick to amaze your friends (I think his accent also helps)! Have a great summer!

Connecting School and Home Experiences

Connecting School and Home Experiences

As I have posted before, I have had many experiences at home with mathematics. My father gave mathematics problems to solve in the summers, he bought me fun mathematics books, and he would constantly ask me riddles. I have always loved riddles and figuring things out. A lot of the riddles he would ask involved mathematics. I also loved to bake cookies at eat cookie dough with my mother. She would ask me to do fractions during the baking process. I need one third of a half of a cup. How much is that? I also loved playing games growing up. I enjoyed playing cards. My dad and mom would ask me probability questions while playing games like go fish. If I have 2 queens in my hand, how many queens are left in the deck. What are the odds of picking a queen, etc. I also played a lot of Yahtzee which has a lot of applicable mathematics. My dad taught me chess which helped me think logically and analytically. My childhood was filled with experiences with mathematics. What's more is these experiences were fun and were apart of my everyday. My parents helped point out how much mathematics plays a role in the world. They did not need to go way out of their way to help me love mathematics. They used what they had, and I am grateful for that.

I hope that I can instill a love (or at least a like) for mathematics in my future students. I hope I can help them have meaningful experiences with mathematics in the world outside of my classroom. A lot of times, students do not see a need for what they are learning within the classroom. However, by helping students see how heavily the world we live in relies on mathematics, by helping them experience mathematics outside of school, I believe the students will have a better chance at enjoying mathematics.


I think the following video sums up a lot of what I mentioned. The teachers make little remote control helicopters and use them to help the students understand trigonometry.

Affective Dimensions of Reading

Affective Dimensions of Reading

I am the kind of person who enjoys watching movies more than I do reading the book. All of the readers look at me and say, "Are you serious? The books are so much better! A movie cannot do the book justice." To them, I respond, "That may be the case....but it also doesn't take me weeks to finish a movie."

That being said, I would consider myself a "good reader," and I do enjoy reading, if I can choose the book to read, and if the book is interesting to me. If you were to ask me if I enjoy reading sappy romance novels, I would say no. Do I enjoy reading about historical things? Not particularly. However, I enjoy reading religious books (from any religion) because I like to understand people's thoughts about how they view the world. For many people, their view of the world comes through the lens of religion. It is interesting to me that we can read words on a page, and gain knowledge. This knowledge can then change the way we see things and understand things. I also enjoy reading a good mystery novel every once in a while.

I am grateful for parents who encouraged me to read in elementary school. I can remember reading The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids, which were a series of mystery books for kids. I enjoyed reading these books at an early age because I enjoyed trying to figure out the mystery. My church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) also encouraged me to read religious text, which sparked my interest in out religious text from various religions.

When it comes to reading, there are many things I as a mathematics teacher can do to foster a climate in which my class is interested in reading texts about mathematics. (Please take a moment to re-read that last sentence...you heard me correctly...interested in reading texts about mathematics). That may seem like crazy talk to most people. Most people see math text as a 600 page book, consisting of definitions and rules that help you solve the five thousand example problems, all of which seem to be the same monotonous example problem, just fashioned in a different light. If that is your only idea of a math text, then I do not blame you for not liking to read texts about mathematics. I can remember at an early age, my dad bought me a book called The Grapes of Math. This is a book which teaches kids math with the use of fun riddles. I loved that math text. As I have said before, I also enjoy reading proofs, which is another form of math text. Reading an equation that you can deduce an answer to is another form of math text.

A lot of students struggle with math because they cannot read math. As we have mentioned before in this class, a lot of learning through reading happens in activities we can do before we begin reading. Teachers need to take the time to get students familiar with the language of mathematics. In a lot of my math classes growing up, the teacher asked us if we had any questions from homework, and then would dive right into another lesson that seemed more complex than the one before it. There was no instruction to get us familiar with upcoming terminology or vocabulary.