Alix Horton
I always worry that, as a literacy coach, I make math teachers nervous. And honestly, it’s probably reasonable- too often, coaches like me (I should note that I’m guilty of this too), move into conversations with facilitators without a real understanding of math as a content area. In addition, we sometimes coach math teachers to do things that don’t support students’ development of math knowledge and skills.
I’m here to say that literacy in math does NOT just mean reading word problems, biographies of mathematicians, or even articles with, at best, superficial connections to math content. Instead, I’d argue that whenever you’re engaging with students in meaningful work involving mathematical symbols and language- work that helps them understand concepts more deeply- you’re supporting students’ math literacy.
With the help of some wonderful facilitators at New Tech’s annual conference, we defined math literacy as…
“Students’ ability to comprehend and produce mathematical symbols (including mathematical language) in a way that shows conceptual understanding and critical thinking.”
Literacy in math means reading and writing shapes, equations, symbols, graphs, lines, formulas, and proofs- and so much more. Supporting students’ deep conceptual understanding of the Pythagorean Theorem or helping them understand what the equal sign means when balancing equations = math literacy
Read the rest of this post and more from Alix on her blog Literacy for Living