Making Connections

To be honest, before beginning this course, I had never even considered contemplating how I would help my students be more successful readers in my future math class. However, through the ideas I have been introduced to, I am beginning to connect the dots. I am regularly reminded of the class I observed last semester. It was a below grade level math class for students who just needed a math credit. If left alone to work through a set of problems, the students would become unfocused and confused. With guidance from a teacher or from me, they knew much more than they gave themselves credit for. I am beginning to see that a common problem for many of them could have been that they did not know how to properly read and comprehend math. This semester, I am excited to try out a few reading strategies with a small group of students to see if they find them helpful. I think underlining key information in word problems will be of great help to them, as well as making notes on the side of equations. For example, writing the equation with words (x^2 > 7 would become "x squared is greater than 7). Through this course and the response I get from the students, I hope to attain an arsenal of math reading strategies.