New Focus on Writing & Reading

In the NCTE Inbox article "New Focus on Reading, Writing" located in The Boston Globe, educators are now stating that they are attempting to try and incorporate literacy in all subject areas. After elementary school, the general public believes that all students should be able to successfully read and write; however, this is never the case. "After fourth grade, students are not longer learning to read, they're reading to learn". Instead, teachers are now bringing more literacy into the classroom in other subject areas besides Language Arts. I've always found it hard to incorporate literacy into math classrooms, except for reading word problems, so how can one successfully apply that?

The article talks about a teacher, Ken Mills, who is observed discussing all types of mathematical problems. With this, you do not know how one can use reading and writing with talking about numbers, variables, slopes, etc., but it can be done. Through observation of Mills' classroom, the students are shown jotting notes down in the columns of their papers and outline every step explicitly that is needed to solve the original problem. This is seen as a "new system of note-taking" in order to improve literacy across the country.

Last semester in my math education class, my professor talked about a similar idea. She had the class explain the way they solved the math problem by writing out our steps in order to solve. Although it did take a longer time to do rather than just write out the numbers, it allowed us to work on explaining ourselves in a written way and then verbally explaining it as well. I think that this way of incorporating English into math classes is a great way to link both subject areas. Reading and writing is everywhere, not just in English classes. By using it throughout different subject areas will hopefully help improve students' literacy.

Plumb, T. (2009). New Focus on Reading, Writing. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/04/08/expanded_reading_writing_classes_lead_to_gains_in_all_subjects_educators_say/