Integrating Language and Mathematics Instruction
Traditional math teaching since the middle of the 20th century is a transmission model. (Draper 2002) A transmission model is one where a teacher instructs the whole class and has little interaction with the students. Draper shows in her article School Mathematics Reform, that this is in conflict with current thinking on literacy instruction. Traditional math teachers do not see this as a problem as they had been taught to teach math skills by memorization and practicing math problems.
As early as the 1920s literacy was seen as necessary in other content areas beyond language arts instruction. (Moore 1983) integrating literacy and mathematics is much more then teaching students how to read math textbooks. Mathematical literacy is comprehension of the math topics, the materials they’re presented in and the materials used to assess student learning such as standardized tests. To gain adequate comprehension students need interact with each other as well as with the teacher to become literate.
Mathematics is a language tool that helps us learn about the world we live in and communicated about it to others. The study and teaching of mathematics may seem to most people to be confined to a special set of symbols and a curious use of letters. That language as it is spoken, also uses common words in a very uncommon ways. Because there is such a large amount of our language used in discussing the other sciences, the need for language instruction and use with mathematics should seem natural.
Any problem in mathematics has a real world application and that application can be the focus of language inclusion when discussing the problem.
Preschool literary instruction should also include math skills such as grouping and counting. Preschool research at University of California at Irvine has a program that helps Spanish-speaking immigrants to gain early literacy that includes math literacy in early second language instruction.
An interesting approach to language inclusion in K — 16 education is to have students write journal entries. Some teachers have journals that students write in 2 to 3 times a week as a part of the regular math instruction. They have writing prompts and free writing just as is used language arts instruction.
Examples of student writing are shown in figures 1 and 2. Figure 1 is an example of fourth grade think, right, share; in figure 2 is an example of fifth grade note taking.
Preparing our students to understand their world includes the preparation to understand and interpret data. Data such as climate information has been used by scientists to prove global warming is a reality. Giving students real data sets that are used to make such predictions and then having classroom discussions and individual assignments that allow students to understand and interpret the data will give them the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills
Such literary practices that develop critical thinking promote participation in the democratic process.
References:
UC Irvine FOCUS!. (2008, July 21). Science and Math Integrating Literacy in Early Childhood [Video file].
Retrieved from http://youtu.be/lNG6dTW9X70?t=5m27s
Wilcox, B., & Monroe, E. (2002). [4th & 5th Grade student notebook entries]. Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/integrating-writing-and-mathematics
Whitin, P., & Whitin, D. (2008). Learning to read the numbers: A critical orientation toward statistics [Article]
From Language Arts, Vol. 85, No 6, 432–441.
Matthews, M., & Rainer, D. (2001). The quandaries of teachers and teacher educators in integrating literacy and mathematics [Article]
From Language Arts, Vol. 78, No 4, 357–364.
Moore, D., Readence, J., & Rickelman, R. (1983). An historical exploration of content area reading instruction [Article]
Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Summer, 1983), pp. 419–438
Kester, D., Bardsley, M., Bach, T., & Gibb-Brown, K. (2009). “But I teach math!’ The journey of middle school mathematics teachers and literacy coaches learning to integrate literacy strategies into the math instruction [Article]
Education. Spring2009, Vol. 129 Issue 3, p467–472
