Catherine's Response - Week 3

Dear group members,

As I read Chapter 11, I couldn’t believe the many ways in which reading and math could be effectively implemented. This chapter presented various practices that math teachers can use in their classrooms in order to promote reading and produce independent learners.

The beginning of the chapter introduced what the reading process is in mathematics. It was interesting to know that it was broken down into three phases. The first stage is called prereading, where students develop purpose, questions, and taps into their prior knowledge. Once students complete this phrase, they enter the during reading stage, where students are now searching for the answers to their questions, making inferences, and visualizing. Finally students then reach the postreading stage, here students now reflect on the knowledge gained. When we first learned about the reading process in class, I was unsure about how a student could “read math”, but this chapter was extremely helpful in clarifying by thoroughly explaining it. This chapter provoked me to revisit a very important piece of reading, “The Reading Apprenticeship Framework in Reading for Understanding.” On page 20, the framework describes the characteristics of a “good reader.” I concluded that a “good reader” must undergo the three phrases mentioned in this chapter. Surely, “good readers” in math class are the ones who make sense of their mathematics text and are able to take it a step further where they connect to the world. This reminds of Paulo Freire when he says, “Read the word and the world.” Such a powerful statement!

            Furthermore, I enjoyed reading the dialogue between Mr. Howard’s and his math class because he was able to model the reading process.

For Alex- Mr. Howard, decided to focus his lesson on teaching his students how to read their mathematic texts. When Mr. Howard, asked his students “how do you know there aren’t any more major headings?” and his student answered “There aren’t any more labels in red,” I immediately thought about formatting cues. Also, Mr. Howard pointed out the importance of the bolded words. I found this great! Too many times, students either neglect to care or are unaware about these formatting cues. Once students are able to point these out on their own, they will become better interpreters when they read any text. Overall, the dialogue clearly showed that the teacher posed questions and clarified where as his students searched for the answers and did most of the explaining. Whenever students have the opportunity to engage in discussions amongst each other, it is then that they are experiencing a powerful learning experience, not to mention that it is an easy way for the teacher to assess them. 

            In addition, I believe that the strategies/practices that were presented in this chapter all fall into the four dimensions of the reading framework. The personal dimension is certainly achieved because each strategy activates student’s prior knowledge, eventually causing students to question/reflect how much they know. The social dimension fosters the reading process in math. It is all about the environment that the teacher establishes. According to The Reading Apprenticeship Framework, the social dimension is about “developing a safe environment for students to be open about their reading difficulties (page 21).” For example, the Pairs Read strategy is used during the second phase in the reading process. For this strategy, one-person reads the math texts and the second summarize what was read to them. This is an excellent way to incorporate the listening, speaking, and reading in math. My personal favorite was Sketch the Text reading strategy because as student read they draw pictures to illustrate concepts and relationships. Extremely helpful for the visual learners! I remember my mentor teacher gave his students a sketch that illustrated liquid conversions. It was literally a big gallon in the center with a smiley face (He named it Mr. G) and attached the quarts, pints, cups, and ounces. It was such a clever way to teach liquid conversions and of course, his students loved it.

            Overall, reading to learn is not a simple process that can be mastered overnight, but instead it requires a great deal of practice, support, and motivation. The reading process is vital in mathematics because it creates collaboration between the reader and text with the goal to create independent learners. Once students are able to become independent learners, the world is theirs.