Mathematics and language have an interesting relationship. Students come into the classroom thinking that numbers and symbols have nothing to do with the way they read, write, listen, or speak. Brenner disagrees and claims that "learning proceeds most effectively in a social context." This means that students understand the most when the problems they read are real, the answers they write are meaningful, the explanations they give are effectively spoken and received by their peers.
The most learning happens in this last state, where student have to think about their thinking, and in turn express to others how they approached a problem. This meta-cognition reinforces the ideas that they are developing, and thus helps students retain the information they are learning. Unfortunately many of our students are suffering in math class because they don't understand the importance of the process and not the product, or because they don't have the means to communicate effectively.
I went to the Teaching for Social Justice conference in San Francisco and had the pleasure of participating in a workshop given by a past classmate, Rick Barlow. He thought it was so important that students start talking about math that he implemented sentence frames and other scaffolds so that they could find power in their voice and start becoming a valuable member of his mathematics classroom. At first they treated it like a joke, but at least they were talking about it. Not only were they talking, but thanks to his scaffolds, they were using the academic language that we often try so hard for students to acquire.
While each group of students is different and should have their unique needs addressed accordingly, I really enjoyed Rick's suggestions and am thinking about incorporating this idea in to my own classroom one day. Until they are comfortable enough to do it on their own, taking baby steps to get to mathematical language competency is sometimes enough. Especially for those who have gone silent for so long...
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