Reading in Math

My students hate to read in general and they hate reading textbooks.  I suspect much of their dislike has to do with their low reading levels.  Over half of my high students are still reading at about a fifth grade level.  So I've had to include reading as part of what I teach.

The cool thing about reading is that it is a two stage process, just as learning math.  The first stage involves the transfer of encoded information to the reader and second, the reader needs to understand the material.

Unfortunately, reading math text does not always involve the reading skills normally taught in English or in reading classes.  Reading math often requires skills specific to math itself.  I know, I was never taught to teach students the reading strategies needed to successfully read a text.  I'm also aware, most elementary teachers do not teach those strategies to their students so students get to high school without that ability.

The differences in reading a math textbook vs a regular book are many.  For instance, research indicates that sentences in math textbooks have more concepts per sentence and paragraph.  This means the material is extremely information dense.  These sentences are filled with lots of information but little repetition.

Another difference is that many sentences contain both numeric and non-numeric symbols laid out in paragraphs that may be in different arrangements with graphs, examples, and other visuals making it more difficult to read using the usual left to right eye movement.

In addition, math books often have sidebars with information that may or may not be relevant to the topic.  The material in these sidebars may be confusing to students because most English textbooks do not have any so a student may not know how to sort through them.

Furthermore, most math textbooks do not follow the standard form of topic sentence and support sentences for each paragraph as found in most other paragraphs.  In a math textbook, the key idea is at the end, not at the beginning.  This is especially true for word problems, when the sentence asking students to find something normally appears.  It its important for the student to read through the material to find the "main idea" before rereading to find the "support" information.

There is also the problem of vocabulary and the words having slightly different meanings within the context.  For instant 3 - 2 to many people is read as "three minus two" but it can also mean "three plus a negative two".  Both the same thing but the second way often confuses students.  In addition, words often have a meaning in English and a different one in Math so students have to know both meanings.

Add to that, the use of certain small words in Math such as "of" and "off" or "a" meaning any number, or something "of" for say the area of a rectangle, meaning inside not multiplication.  There was a study done where students were specifically taught these small words, and their ability to do math improved because they understood the differences.

There is a specific set of strategies students can use with a math textbook to improve their reading.  First students can preview the text by looking at the title, all headings and subheadings and using it to activate prior knowledge which in this case might be where they've used it before or done something similar. Students could also write out questions they have about the topic based on their previewing.

Next they figure out the major concept covered in the material along with determining is they know the specialized vocabulary, and see if they can connect it to real life.  At the same time, the teacher can prepare by finding the major concept and are their pieces in the reading they may not have the vocabulary or are unable to figure out the meaning through context.  The teacher also needs to know if they need to use supplemental materials to improve understanding of the topic.

It is important to use a variety of graphic organizers from the Frayer Model for new vocabulary words to analysis grids for separating the characteristics of quadratics or other shapes, to a flow chart on processes.

One source suggests teaching students to use the  SQRQCQ for word problems.

Survey - Read the material quickly to get a general understanding.

Question -  Question yourself to figure out what the problem needs to be answered.

Reread - Reread the problem to find the details needed.

Question - Ask what operations need to be performed in what order.

Computations - Do the calculations.

Question - Does the answer look reasonable?

I've taught my students the "Kentucky Fried Chicken Wings" method to answer questions.

K - What do I know?  What information did they give me?

F - What do I have to find?

C - What else do I need?  What formula?  What operations and in what order?

W - Do the work and find the answer.

This is an introduction to integrating reading instruction into the classroom.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.