So far, our blogging/STEM literacy journey has provided several ideas of targeted strategies that may work best in a scientific environment, so I have decided to dedicate this entire post to the people who, like me, find it thrilling to finally solve an equation algebraically after 8 pages of work: the mathematicians. Perhaps I am biased because of my educational background - which is math and physics - but I really love learning about numbers and formulas, and understanding how the marriage of science and math can describe, well, almost everything. I’m going to include physics (and engineering) in this post today as well because although it certainly has more than enough theory, often found at the heart of physics…is numbers. But how do we include literacy in a subject that is so number-centric, and what does that even mean? Although we have seen that literacy looks quite different across various subjects, there are foundations of literacy that are true regardless of the content. And despite the fact that mathematics can often be seen as primarily numeracy-based, there are certainly literacy components that are just as important. The Alberta Education Literacy Fact Sheet outlines these ways that literacy is present in mathematics:
The main ideas outlined above from the fact sheet focus mostly on reading comprehension, and this is undoubtedly an incredibly important component to achieving success in math. I would, however, argue that there are other literacy or literacy-related components which are just as crucial, such as graphing/reading graphs, summarizing results, and communicating relevant data. Graphing The reason that I would argue graphing fits within the broader ‘literacy’ umbrella is because graphing is essentially a form of communication with your reader or audience. The goal of any graph (math or science) is to succinctly depict the relationships amongst the variables or data in a way that can easily be interpreted. In fact, in a recent publication in The American Biology Teacher, Harsh and Schmitt-Harsh state: “In the sciences, proficiency in graphing is considered a central element of scientific literacy.” (Harsh & Schmitt-Harsh, 2016). I would further argue that graphing is a two-fold literacy strategy: not only do you, as the creator, need to use appropriate skills to create graphs and ensure that you use all of the necessary information and leave out all information extraneous to the problem, but as the reader, you then need to apply the comprehension skills necessary to understand what the graph is telling you, interpret the data, and draw appropriate conclusions based on that data. How you choose to use graphing in the classroom is an important facet of student learning. In a 2019 Cambridge Mathematics article, Macey argues that: “…the process of designing and critiquing graphical representation encourages students to attend to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of data representation, and may support graphical literacy when interpreting unfamiliar graphs…” (Macey, 2019) He further states that merely teaching the process of creating graphs does not teach students the underlying reasoning for choices made. (Macey, 2019) How can you incorporate more graphing into the classroom to develop these skills? Check out some of these pages/links below for ideas of classroom implementation and strategies or resources:
Summarizing This is one strategy/area that just keeps popping up! We have already talked about summarizing as a writing strategy here, and it is also an important skill for researching, which we discussed at length here. In terms of application, summarizing isn’t all that different in a mathematical context from a scientific or other context - the goal remains the same: how can you succinctly impart the key ideas of the literature? Seeing as this has already been discussed in similar contexts, I will not reiterate that information here. Rather, I will write about some ways that summarizing could be brought into a secondary math class. It isn’t often that math teachers have students do a lot of academic reading, which is certainly understandable. However, introducing students to the idea of a math article can be a good thing! This doesn’t need to be a lengthy article proving some obscure theorem in the general case (although that may certainly be neat to show interested students - for example, students may be interested to know about the Millennium Problems, a set of 6 (originally 7!) unsolved mathematical problems, each of which has a $1,000,000 prize awaiting whomever can solve it. The first of these problems, the Poincaré conjecture, was solved by Gregori Perelman, who was awarded the million-dollar prize in 2010, but famously refused!(Hosch, 2009) ) Instead, it could be a short article written about the application of math concepts which can be made to tailor to curriculum, and simultaneously be engaging for students to learn about. Check out some of these resources from Math Giraffe for short, mathematical articles that students can read and summarize. The actual process of summarizing need not look particularly different than it does in other subjects - students may just need to focus on describing the math concepts that are being applied. This too is an important mathematical literacy strategy that is incorporated: the ability to translate math formulas into meaningful explanations in words is something that could be focused on. Most students could likely rattle off that the equation of a line is “y=mx+b”, but can they also articulate that this equation means slope-intercept form of a function with a slope of m and a y-intercept of b? Communicating Data I specifically left this aspect to the very end, as it is, in some ways, a culmination of all of the math-specific literacy components that we have talked about so far. In order to communicate data, students must first be able to read (and comprehend) the data, and then display it in a way that makes sense to their reader/audience. If that is in graphical format, then they may be practicing their graphing skills. If that is as a summary, they may be using summarizing skills. So rather than including this as a specific subset of literacy skills, I include it at the end to indicate it’s all-encompassing nature of mathematical literacy. Hopefully this article has given you some ideas of ways that math and literacy are intertwined, and what some strategies may be that allow students to practice building these skills. Math, engineering and physics are some of those subjects that are seldom analyzed through a literacy lens, yet it can be refreshing to learn about them apart from the constant plug-and-chug process that they can easily become. Just as the nature of science can be used as an important motivator as the basis for exploring literacy, so too can the exciting mathematical applications be used to inspire young mathematicians, engineers and physicists. ReferencesAlberta Education. (n.d.) Literacy fact sheet. Accessed November 23, 2020 from https://education.alberta.ca/media/3402193/lit-fact-sheet.pdf
Common Sense Education. (n.d.). Digital graphing tools. Accessed on November 23, 2020 from https://www.commonsense.org/education/top-picks/digital-graphing-tools The Concord Consortium. (2020). Graph literacy. Accessed November 23, 2020 from https://learn.concord.org/graph-literacy Desmos. (2020). Desmos. Accessed on November 28, 2020 from https://www.desmos.com Geogebra. (2020). Geogebra. Accessed on November 28, 2020 from https://www.geogebra.org Harsh, J.A., M. Schmitt-Harsh. (2016). Instructional strategies to develop graphing skills in the college science classroom. The American Biology Teacher. 78(1):49-56. Accessed on November 24, 2020 from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289556579_Instructional_Strategies_to_Develop_Graphing_Skills_in_the_College_Science_Classroom Hosch, W.L. (2009). Millenium problem. The Encyclopedia Brittanica. Accessed on November 24, 2020 from https://www.britannica.com/science/Millennium-Problem Macey, D. (2019). The trouble with graphs. Cambridge Mathematics. Accessed November 23, 2020 from https://www.cambridgemaths.org/blogs/the-trouble-with-graphs/ Math Giraffe. (2016). Relevant math articles to share with teens. Math Giraffe. Accessed on November 24, 2020 from https://www.mathgiraffe.com/blog/relevant-math-articles-to-share-with-teens University of Colorado Boulder. (2020). Phet interactive simulations. University of Colorado Boulder. Accessed on November 28, 2020 from phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/filter?sort=alpha&view=grid
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