This article aims to share five practical approaches for how teachers can identify, adapt, and create their own writing prompts they assign to students: (1) Promote Students' Solution Paths; (2) Go beyond Asking Students to Simply "Explain"; (3) Prompt Students to Share Their Reasoning; (4) Have Students Consider the Validity of a Given…

In this article, the author shares the Menu Writing project, designed to promote a meaningful, real-world connection to mathematics with the lives of students. The rationale for developing this project was two-fold: (1) to connect school mathematics to students' lived experiences to encourage and sustain students' interest, motivation, and…

Almost twenty years ago, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) published "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" (2000), which recommended that teachers should incorporate more writing into their math lessons, claiming that writing helps students "consolidate their thinking" (p. 402) by causing them…

Mathematics teachers often resist generic literacy strategies because they do not seem relevant to math learning. Discipline-specific literacy practices that emerge directly from the math content and processes under study are more likely to be embraced by math teachers. Furthermore, national and state-level mathematics standards as well as Common…

I discuss a pedagogical strategy in which we ask students to write about science. Such writing is to be done regularly and often, in class and out of class, in the format of brief "letters to a friend" and longer essays. The goal of this technique is not to teach students how to write; it is to use their writing to help them learn the science.…

This article will describe a writing assignment designed for use in a liberal arts college whose mission stresses effective written communication both within and across disciplines. In this assignment, students write three separate solutions to the same mathematics problem: one for a mathematical peer, a second for a contemporary that does not…

This article presents two innovative tools--the Mathematics-Literacy Planning Framework and Mathematics-Literacy Implementation Checklist--which are designed to help instructional coaches and specialists support teachers to meet the challenges of the mathematics-literacy integration goals of the Common Core. Developed with teacher input, these…

As educators we are facing an unprecedented challenge to prepare our students not only for traditional careers but also for future careers that don't exist today. Many of these careers will require a firm grounding in disciplines such as physics, along with multidisciplinary, Global, and systems thinking skill sets. Our Multidisciplinary…

This article will describe a project designed for use in a liberal arts mathematics course that satisfies an institutional quantitative reasoning requirement. Students, working in groups of four, are responsible for introducing and explaining new material to the rest of their class. Their "reporting" of mathematical information is…

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the elementary grades. Teachers are increasingly looking for ways to help their students integrate literacy instruction with content area learning. This article highlights some of the similarities between reading comprehension and mathematical…

Beginning in third grade, Pennsylvania students are required to take the Pennsylvania State Standardized Assessment (PSSA), which presents multiple-choice mathematics questions and open-ended mathematics problems. Consistent with the Communication Standard of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, while solving the open-ended problems,…

Carter (2007) identifies four meta-genres associated with writing activities that can help students learn discipline-specific writing skills relative to standards within a given field: these include problem solving, empirical approaches to analysis, selection of sources to use within research, and production of materials that meet accepted…

Presents a project in which grade 1 children use diary writing as a link between home and school. Describes how they used problem solving and problem posing as part of normal classroom and home activities. (ASK)

Shares observations made by a third-grade teacher who experimented with a variety of strategies to improve her students' abilities to write about mathematics. Notes that this gave the teacher a greater understanding of how students approached solving math problems and helped students practice writing in a meaningful way. (SR)

Describes a class activity using graph theory in the form of finding the least number of firehouses needed to serve a town as mapped by a series of points and lines connecting the points. Notes that the third graders eagerly attacked the problem, and themselves suggested that the problem could be used in grades 2-8. (RS)