Non-Non-Fiction Math Writing

A big push in Ontario education right now is bringing non-fiction writing into the math classroom by encouraging students to do things like keep Math Journals, write letters to other classmates explaining concepts, or do presentations on math problems. The idea behind this is that when students use words to talk about math they are activating a different area of the brain and exploring the new concepts in greater depth, thus promoting a greater understanding of the math at hand. I would like to suggest another way of activating different brain areas with math though - fiction writing. 

This year, as a summative assessment for our properties of triangles unit, I asked my class to write children’s stories incorporating the different principles they had learned. Not only did their creativity blossom in both their writing and illustrating, but they were forced to examine the math concepts in much different ways than they previously had. In order to seamlessly integrate the principles into their plot lines they had to explore different applications of theorems, as well as different ways of representing the triangles in their illustrations. They had a lot of fun naming their characters, too - Captain Con and his sidekick Gruent, for example. And I thought I was the only one who enjoyed nerdy math jokes!