Friday, May 10, 2013

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!


3 comments:

  1. This is a great idea. I know that journaling has never been a strong passion of the majority of my math students (have done it before but am not currrently doing journaling). This would be a great idea for my applied students who I think would like the fiction aspect as opposed to nonfiction or letters to a classmate.
    Presentations are fun in math - I had students do that yesterday and was amazed by having them tell me how they arrived at an answer let me know that they got it right away - great for formative assessment.

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  2. I agree with Steph. Great idea! I like this idea for my applied or locally developed students. Thanks for sharing.

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  3. I think that this is a great idea. It incorporates so many different subjects in, and like you said, it really shows if the students understand the concepts or not. Not only that, but it also allows the students who are not as math-minded to show off their talents, allowing everyone to succeed.

    Really creative idea, I love it!

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