More on Writing in Math.

I found this book called "Write on! Math" by Rovert Gerver.  It is subtitled "Taking Better Notes in Math Class"  I am always on the lookout for ways to increase literacy in my math classroom so when I stumbled across this on Amazon, I ordered it.  I managed to get it for way less than the listed price.

The book comes in at around 90 pages with four chapters focused on the topic of taking better notes in math class.  The first chapter discusses communication in general, using pictures etc.  The second chapter focuses on the notes students take in class.

It is the third chapter that really catches my interest as it is titled "Writing Techniques.  It has three dozen strategies to use in the class for writing mathematics.  Imagine, three dozen writing strategies!  The final chapter is on writing research papers in Math.  That is such an awesome idea and it would scaffold skills learned in the English class.

One tip I like is simply that all figures must have a figure number and a descriptive, one sentence caption, just like you find in a regular text book.  The example he gives is the Eiffel Tower and he even gives three examples for effective captions because he says identifying it as the Eiffel Tower is not enough.

I will post information over the next school year as I work my way through the tips to let you know how the tips work in my classroom.

Neat ideas

Yesterday I had the pleasure of participating in a 30 min webinar on 3 ways to increase writing in the math classroom put on by Triumph learning and it featured Alex Kajitani.  The three ways were awesome and showed me ways to improve working on vocabulary and expressing their mathematical thinking.  I am so glad I went.   Since the new standards are more rigerous and require students to explain their thinking, 
I had a great time today in that I had all my classes come up with a list of 4 sets of homophones where one word is math oriented and one is regular.  The students came up with some great ones such as (add, ad), (eight, ate), (one, won) (two, to, too) etc.  I got this idea from the webinar and it was fun to try.  I am thinking of looking at other ways to integrate this idea.
Another one is remembering to have students use a non-example with the example on vocabulary words.  I would like to use the Frayer model but I have not been willing to use it due to the amount of paper it requires.  Then today, I realized I can make a copy of it and set it up in my wiki or in another place so students could download it onto the iPad, fill out the graphic organizer and upload it to their folder.  This way I can have students actually do the vocabulary words and do them electronically.
I read something today about the fact that each group of students who arrive in school are different than the previous group in regard to the amount of technological knowledge they have as digital natives.  This is causing us to change our teaching methods to meet their needs and to keep them engaged. 
It is a challenge to increase writing within the math classroom, integrate effective technology and try to keep up with my students.  Over all, it is worth it and I am enjoying.