<p>NPR piece, “Schools Emphasize Writing, Even in Math Class”, highlights a trend in high schools around the country to emphasize the need for all students to be good writers - many teachers are even integrating lessons about writing into math classes.</p>
<p>Even though standardized testing of writing skills has drawn sharp criticism, the pressing need to emphasize the mastery of basic writing skills in the classroom is no doubt connected to the compulsory inclusion of writing sections on the SAT and ACT.</p>
<p>I think the focus on writing is great, but turning the math curriculum into a language-laden program, as some schools do, really hurts the kids with strong numbers skills but language processing problems.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think there should be an emphasis on writing in K-12 (not necessarily in math but in general). I have to say that my kids’ K-12 schooling DID emphasize writing. Further, my state (Vermont) also values writing in the curriculum and in fact, there are state wide evaluations of students that involve writing portfolios at different grade junctures, with benchmarks. My kids wrote a lot before college. Both are excellent writers. I feel in this regard, they were well prepared for college. </p>
<p>Both have gotten excellent feedback on writing in college. Just yesterday, my youngest (who I must admit is a gifted writer), got a letter of feedback, after submitting a writing piece, from a college teacher in a NON writing type class, about her talents as a writer and hopes that she will pursue that field …though that is not what she is training in at this professional musical theater training program…he just had no idea she had talents as a writer until now…the class is in singing! </p>
<p>Anyway, as a college counselor, and at this time of year, I am working with many senior applicants on their many essays. For a lot of them, I feel their writing skills are quite poor or fair at best, and it hard for me to imagine that they got this far in HS at that level of writing. I can’t imagine them doing well with the writing laden college courses. In fact, just yesterday, I had a parent of a client tell me how much I have taught her child about how to write, just in the many essays I have helped her with in the feedback/revision process. I was never a teacher of writing, LOL, but I do find myself teaching kids how to write in this college application process. And for many of them, they NEED it! </p>
<p>While my kids’ high school may not have had AP classes when they attended like many posters’ high schools seem to have, the Honors classes did emphasize writing a great deal, as did our elementary school. My kids may have attended no name publics that send very few to the top colleges in the land, but I do believe my kids had a very strong preparation in writing, that some who go to schools that seem to teach to tests, do not get.</p>
<p>If schools try to integrate writing into the math curriculum, they are just going to reduce the quality of the math program, imo. I support the teaching of strong writing skills in other subjects, but students in this country seem to have enough trouble with math.</p>
<p>i’ll chime in on the writing in math issue – i also see this as a real problem and an overreaction to the writing problem in the schools.
math is really its own language – i really think schools risk hindering, not helping, kids “get” the math if they bog it down with writing issue.
this is currently driving a good friend of mine, who is a mathematician, crazy with respect to how his kids are being taught math.</p>
<p>think of the difference of describing pytahgorian’s formula as a mathematical formula (a-squared + b-squared = c-squared – sorry, couldn’t figure out how to do superscript for the squared) versus writing it out in words (take the length of one side of a right triangle and mutiply it by itself, and then take the other …). which is better designed to further math concepts! yet i’ve heard of kids having to describe in english what they are doing mathematically. not helpful in my mind at all!</p>
<p>I’ll chime in on the writing in math class phenomenon. In this state, writing about math is an integral part of the state assessment exams. I think the idea is supposed to be that a student doesn’t really KNOW what he/she is doing when working out a math problem unless she can explain it in words. It is a ridiculous notion, and has been promulgated by educators who do not themselves have any natural talent for math (IMO). When a friend of my son was in the 11th grade and taking Calc 3 and Differential equations at the local state flagship univ–and getting the highest grade in the class–he scored in the “proficient” rather than “advanced” category on the state math assessment, presumably because his verbal explanations could not be followed by the graders. This has been going on for years here, and I don’t think it is the fault of those who want to see more writing skills developed. I’m all for that, but not in math class.</p>
<p>I would be glad to forgo the writing in math class for better general writing classes.: nnes that focus on supporting a hypothesis, grammar and punctuation.</p>
<p>Public schools need to refocus on the basic blocking and tackling.</p>
<p>It always seemed to me the mania for making kids write written explanations of how they got their answers in math - made math-minded kids hate the one thing they were really good at.</p>
<p>Well, a good mind bender for GRE practice is to make up a word problem for some of the practice problems which took you a great deal of time to understand. I do not think that is bad. But, if you are a high schooler, and having to write out your school work for math by describing what you did would be mind numbing imho. That would have bored me to tears in high school.</p>
<p>Mathmom, I am so glad you didn’t resist - that link is priceless. I find it interesting that most of the responses to the OP from highly articulate “math people” out there don’t support the use of writing exercises in math classes to foster either a better understanding of the material or heightened communication skills. For people who are “balanced”, that is with equally developed math and verbal skills, do the words just get in the way of the math? What about students who fall into the other extremes - for them, I would think that the “content literacy” concept and its application in the classroom, at least in theory, would be beneficial:</p>
<p>The complete integration of writing exercises into all aspects of the curriculum, which is the basic idea behind “content literacy” is that “writing about math leads to a less restrictive view of mathematics - instead of a series of formulas and rigid answers, the students come to see mathematics as a process and a dialogue to which they too can contribute” and that is a worthy goal as well as a tremendous achievement for any teacher in any discipline.</p>
<p>The emphasis on “understanding” and explanations in math is simply a way to reward the kids who the teachers like, but who can’t compete in math without a crutch. </p>
<p>You might as well ask Pedro Martinez to explain why the ball curves. Execution is a great deal more important than what passes for understanding in these classes at the high school level.</p>
<p>the mathematician i know who has been going crazy over this issue described it to me like this –
math is its own language. using english to describe it interferes with the actual understanding of mathematical processes – math is not an merely another application of english.</p>
<p>he gave the further example – it would be like teaching a foreign language like this - tell a kid to translate “I speak Spanish” into Spanish, but instead of accepting the answer “Yo hablo Espanol” – expect them them to first write out: “Yo is the Spanish first person objective pronoun. Hablar is an “ar” verb so the first person is conjugated as “hablo.” Espanol is the Spanish word for Spanish – therefore the answer is Yo hablo Espanol.” Would anyone really think this is the way to teach a foreign language – ie to bog it down with the application of English to explain the translation?? Then why does anyone think that it makes sense to describe in english words the steps of a mathematical solution?</p>
<p>my error – Yo is the first person subjective pronoun – see how hard it can be to put into English descriptions what you expect your mind to just be able to do! :)</p>
<p>The thing that I find appalling is that on some of the NY assessments a kid who can do the math in his head and puts down the right answer can get a lower score than the kid who explains his work and gets the wrong one. I don’t mind part scores for showing your work, but this is ridiculous. I do feel that the language of math is for the most part numbers not words. Though obviously there is room for words in math - just look at all those word problems!</p>
<p>reminds me of the “new math” that was popular when i was in school – the idea that it was more important for a student to understand how and why than to actually get the right answer! </p>
<p>i don’t know – is the theory that these days the “right” answer is just a matter of pressing the right calculator keys so we don’t really have to worry about that, but rather that the kids can understand why they are pressing which calculator keys? it all just seems to end up putting the kids who in fact have a real math talent at a disavantage.</p>
<p>My daughter’s mentor believes being able to communicate accurately what you are doing in mathematics is as important as doing the math. Prior to becoming a calculus teacher he was a engineer for 30 years. </p>
<p>He came to teaching to correct a deficiency he saw in his young hires. His class was one of those stand and recite Professor Kingsfield from “Paper Chase” -“Here’s a dime. Call your mother.” classes that strike fear in the hearts of the unprepared. His favorite retort to someone who questioned his emphasis on precise speaking and writing was to say “That’s what sends spaceprobes crashing into Mars.”</p>
<p>(OT. In a school where 2 or 3 students score over a 3 on AP Bio, over half of his Calc class scores a 4 or 5. Not good enough for a movie, but an unbelievable achievement nonetheless. Oh, he also “hated girls”, or that was the scuttlebutt. D didn’t care . She took the course(s) anyway. Her worst grades in high school (still low A’s). He retired my D’s junior year but came back for her graduation. He whistled and cheered like a crazy person when she walked across the stage. Now that’s an award worth having.)</p>
<p>I suspect it may have been the idea that this is a political issue rather than one about whether the kids can do the math or not. </p>
<p>I had no idea how screwed up math instruction had become until my older son attended an elite elementary school where the head mistress included in every speech the idea that there were somehow kids walking around who knew a lot of facts and did well on tests, but didn’t really understand anything. This was the standard condemnation of learning by “rote”. </p>
<p>Later, in a different environment, another elementary head mistress used to stand up and gush over how math had been so non-fun for her, but now they spend a lot of time during class expalining how useful it is. Its no wonder that if you take a bunch of upper middle class kids today from better school districts, at say grade 4 or 5, they are all stunningly slow at multiplication tables. Try it with someone you know is a smart kid…you’ll be amazed.</p>
<p>And the writing instruction thats been put in is so mechanical it is truly a joke. I’d appreciate more time spent learning facts and less time on “how to write”. A little warriners english composition would go a long way towards improving writing abilities.</p>
<p>when my d was in elem school, i remember so clearly at meet the teacher night, the teacher explaining that yes, they were going to have to memorize the multipliation tables – this was a teacher who’d been there over 25 years – and she added, there simply isn’t any other way; they have to be able to have the basic arithmetic facts at their fingertips or they will never be able to move on to anything else. personally, i am very glad the teacher had such a sensible approach.</p>
<p>i recall looking at her textbook’s explanation of the various times tables (which was not as basic as her teacher’s approach) – elaborate complicated methods of remembering how to figure out what 3 time something would be, etc. do we really want kids faced with computing how much carpeting they need for a room to have to go thru elaborate mental exercises as to what it “means” to multiply 9 x 8? it seems that we have become so afraid of telling kids they have to memorize something what we make everything more complicated than it has to be.</p>
<p>New Math, Old Math, Fuzzy Math, Singapore Math - the hot topic these days is math reform: “Across the nation, the reconsideration of what should be taught and how has been accelerated by a report in September by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the nation’s leading group of math teachers.”</p>
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