Mitchell Tandy

EDUC 340
Literacy beyond Language
Part I:
As teachers, we come from an incredibly wide variety of backgrounds and interests.
What other profession could draw artists, historians, scientists, and mathematicians to the same
place? However, despite those differences, we all have a vital goal in common: we want to guide
the generations of tomorrow towards a better future for themselves and the world around them.
We all want to help students improve themselves so they can reach their dreams, and in order for
them to be able to succeed in the world, there is one skill more vital than almost any other:
literacy. Literacy is not just the ability to read and write, but it is also the ability to effectively
navigate and contribute to all kinds of knowledge sources, from novels to textbooks to the
internet. Some teachers teach art, while others teach science, but all teachers are teachers of
reading.
When I began this semester, I completely believed that all of this was unrelated to math.
I believed that these literacy courses were just requirements that the state were throwing at me
for no other reason than to standardize the program for all content areas, and that I would never
actually use the material. However, as strange as it may seem, the most powerful experience that
showed me literacys place in mathematics wasnt in my education courses. It was in my math
classes, because my professors expected me to have literacy skills related to math that I did not
have. I transferred to Colorado State University from a community college this semester, so all
of my previous mathematics courses were very numerical. I had never written a proof in my life,
and I had always learned from examples with numbers rather than words. As a result, I was in

for a big surprise at CSU. Every assignment and every test required so many words and so few
numbers, and calling my process of adjusting a struggle would be huge understatement. I have
always been a strong writer throughout most of my education, but I have never been a strong
writer in math. How do I put an equation in a sentence? What does iff mean? Am I writing
too much for this problem? These were all literacy skills that I simply didnt have, so I had to
force myself to learn them out of necessity.
In hindsight, however, I dont blame the math department at CSU for my struggles,
because this is how I should have been taught all along. Seeing examples of concepts with
numbers over and over again gave me an intuitive understanding of those concepts, but I could
never adequately express those concepts independent of those examples. Being able to write in
math allows students to not simply apply it to abstract problems, but to also understand the
concept well enough to see its outside applications. A non-numerical understanding of concepts
is a much more complete understanding.
As I began to understand the importance of mathematical literacy related to writing in
math, I also began to see the importance of other literacy skills in math. I remembered all the
times when I was tutoring at the community college with math students, and they didnt
understand something from the textbook. Time after time, I would translate the book by
telling them that the book was just saying something that they already knew, but it was saying it
in the most abstract, complicated way possible. Those students werent able to translate that
information the same way I was able to, because no one had ever taught them how to read the
textbook. In fact, if I was in their shoes, Im not sure I would get everything I needed from the
chapter either. I wish someone had taken the time to teach us how to read math textbooks.

Thankfully, however, my education courses were able to show me how I can teach
students the literacy skills they need to succeed in math. I am constantly impressed by the
students of Mr. Schulzs geometry class, who have already learned proof-writing skills that I just
learned this semester. One time in particular, I was working with a student named Dustin, and
after he finished the problem, I told him, This will come in real handy when you start writing
proofs in college, someday. He turned to me casually and replied, We actually started doing
proofs this year. I was always in the higher-level classes in my public education, but these kids
are already way beyond what I was able to accomplish at their age.
Schools like Blevins Middle School have changed their methods dramatically to prepare
students for a constantly advancing society, and weve already seen how fast the world can
change. Vacca and Vacca express it best:
The ways in which we find information have transformed radically in just a few short
years. In less than a decade , the Internet made information accessible to a degree
never before imagined. Even five-year-olds, can find the most arcane bits of
information in seconds.
New literacy skills are being demanded of newer generations, and incorporating the instruction
of those skills into classrooms of all disciplines is vital. This is especially true for math; few
people are aware that computer science is a sub-discipline of mathematics. The algorithms and
logical constructs that underlie many of the technological developments of the modern era are
based on mathematical principles, so should it not be the responsibility of math educators to
expand students understanding in this area?
This is why teaching is not just about content areas; its about giving students the literacy
skills to succeed in all content areas. Teaching is about showing students how to develop an

understanding of the cycle of evaporation and precipitation from a diagram or how to find the
emotional value hidden in a painting or sculpture. I am confident, now, that how we teach
students to teach themselves with reading is even more important than the skills we teach. If you
give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day. If you teach him to fish, you will feed him for a
lifetime. If you teach him to learn, you will give him life.

Part II:
Although few people would connect literacy and math, many literacy skills are vital
components at any level of math education. As a result, the strategies that are used in other
disciplines to reinforce these skills can also be used in math to help students learn the literacy
skills that they need in order to be successful. As examples of these cross-discipline
applications, I can apply the KWLS, visual-verbal, semantic map, connections, and think-aloud
strategies to my mathematics classrooms.
The KWLS activity type is an excellent way to frame a unit in a way that helps students
both preview the concepts they will be learning and retain the concepts they have learned. In
their math composition books, I can have students dedicate a page at the beginning of each unit
where theyll divide it into four parts. That day they can fill out the what I know and what I
want to know (or what I will know for classes that need a bit more direction). Previous
formulas or diagrams they think might be related should be emphasized in the K and W
sections to show that what they are learning is connected to previous material. At the end of the
unit, students can fill out the what I learned and what I still want to know sections, remove
the page from their composition books, and turn them in to me. This way, I can see exactly how

the class is progressing and what remaining questions I may be able to dedicate more class time
to.
The Visual-Verbal vocabulary activity has perhaps no better application than in
mathematics, especially the Freyer model. Whenever a vocabulary section is required for a unit,
such as for types of angles in an eighth-grade trigonometry unit, students can benefit from
creating their own definitions, listing some characteristics of those angles, and giving examples
and non-examples. The examples and non-examples are uniquely useful for most geometry
concepts, because drawing a visual depiction of the concept can provide valuable insight that
cant be replicated by definitions or proofs.
Semantic maps could be used as another framing technique for units in a similar way to
the KWLS activity. At the beginning of a high school geometry unit on circles and related lines,
students can create a semantic map where they show everything they know about circles.
Students with different levels of math skills will be able to express concepts that are appropriate
for their own abilities; students who excel at math may write that circles are special cases of
ellipses, while students who struggle with math may write that the perimeter of a circle is its
diameter times pi. At the end of that same unit, students can make another semantic map that
includes what theyve learned. This type of approach emphasizes that students should focus on
the key concepts of the unit that theyd want to add to their starting maps.
Helping students make real-world connections to material is a vital part of any math
teachers job. The question when am I ever going to use math is so prevalent amongst students
that the American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America directly
supported Brigham Young University to create the non-profit resource WeUseMath.org just to
raise awareness of where math actually is applied in the world. In fact, according to data found

one this website, 12 of the top 15 highest-paying college degrees all require a surprisingly
extensive understanding of mathematics. Therefore, in order to help show students how relevant
their course material actually is, reading activities should consistently be paired with connections
activities where students can connect concepts with their lives, other texts, and the world around
them. However, that is not enough; each concept should be presented alongside real-world
applications that are interesting and vital to society.
Preparing students with the skills necessary to succeed also includes teaching those skills
that are needed to navigate future courses, which is how think aloud sessions are best used in
math. Students of all ages consistently have difficulty with interpreting story-problems, where
data has to extracted and reorganized into an equation that can be solved, but if I can read
through these types of problems and explain how I recognize what I need to use in order to solve
them, my students can be much more prepared to tackle future problems of a similar nature.
However, story problems are not the only applications of read aloud sessions; textbook readings
with read aloud sessions are effective as well. Most students are never explicitly taught how to
read a math textbook, even though there are unique strategies associated with this type of text.
Whereas most texts in other disciplines are read from start-to-finish, I can demonstrate how to go
back and forth between examples, theorems, and definitions in order to build a comprehensive
understanding of the subject.
These types of activities are only a few examples to demonstrate the application of
literacy-building strategies to math; countless other strategies and applications exist. It can
become easy to forget the true role of a teacher when confronted by assessment and evaluation of
curriculum, but teachers should always remember that students wont remember all the tiny
details of the content they are taught. Rather, the literacy strategies students develop in all

classrooms will be with them for the rest of their lives. So when you are teaching students how
to calculate a slope or how to measure an angle, dont forget to also teach them how to learn.

Bibliography

15 Most Lucrative College Degrees. WeUseMath.Org. Grigham Young University

Mathematics Department. Jun 16 2008. Accessed Apr 23 2014. Web.
A non-profit website that promotes awareness of the unique and extensive uses of mathematics
across all of todays society.

Kraus, Jennifer and Jasmann, Christine. Literacy and the Learner Recitation. Colorado State
University. Blevins Middle School, Fort Collins, CO. Jan-May 2014. Lecture.
A series of classroom sessions that provided instruction on effective use of the specific literacy
development strategies referred to in Part II.

Vacca, Richard and Vacca, Jo Anne. Learning with New Literacies. Content Area Reading:
Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum. Pearson Education, 2010.
A textbook whose excerpts are found in a custom Pearson textbook for Colorado State
Universitys Literacy and the Learner lecture course.