September 18, 2015

Writing across the curriculum is taking its toll on me! Social studies and science are no problem because we can load up on information writing, even if the kids hate it and it pretty boring, but writing math is a problem. First of all, the kids are mostly struggling with the math part of math and know I want them to write about math.  Can writing in math be writing about things with lots of numbers in the story?!!  LOL  We wrote word problems and went from there.  I told the class that we would start with subtraction and addition problems.  I paired everyone up and told them to write one addition and one subtraction problem and then they will present them to the class and the class will solve their problems on their white boards.  The first round presented problems that were really simple, but it was a start.  I told them I wanted them to improve two things:  I wanted more description in their problems and more words like estimate, round, about, etc.  So, what did they do?  They just started using huge numbers!!  Oh, well, back we go and I write another problem but have more input from them.  As they give me suggestions, I use them but also offer suggestions of what might be better and what do they think.  Some, they scoffed at and others they included.  We made progress and we will continue writing math problems for a while and then move forward with more math writing.  I will have to do more research on writing in math.