Although kindergarteners often are excited to share their mathematical ideas, they may not be sure how to explain the underlying reasoning that brought them to their answers. Teachers seeking to use literacy skills in mathematics to support kindergarteners' reasoning can use writing to provide each student an avenue to communicate their individual…

In the last decade, researchers have focused more on how to provide instructional supports for mathematics writing (Powell et al., 2017). In this synthesis, we examined 22 studies about mathematics writing to determine the overall mathematics-writing and mathematics outcomes of mathematics-writing instruction, the mathematics-writing and…

Disciplinary literacy strategies in mathematics lessons are essential and may be embedded in three necessary parts of the lesson: before reading, during reading, and after reading. In this article, we highlight disciplinary literacy strategies that middle school mathematics teachers might implement to guide students to increased mathematical…

In this article, we explore the reading and writing of mathematical poetry from our experiences as mathematics teacher educators. First, we outline how our own engagement with mathematical poetry encouraged us to incorporate it into our teaching of pre-service teachers. We describe how our initial disappointment with the mathematical content of…

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…

Mathematical writing recently has been defined as writing to reason and communicate mathematically. But mathematics instructional resources lack guidance for teachers as to how to implement such writing. The purpose of this paper is to describe how methods of design-based research were used to develop an instructional resource when one does not…

Writing is an important mode of thinking and learning for elementary students. Consistent efforts have been made to encourage discipline-specific writing, yet defining qualities of elementary mathematical writing have historically been underdeveloped. This article offers educators a new framework that conceptualizes mathematical writing as writing…

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…

Nationally and internationally, teachers are being held increasingly accountable for student achievement, particularly in light of high stakes literacy and numeracy tests. Policies have been implemented that are designed to improve educational outcomes through raising student literacy levels across all school years in all subject areas. This has…

Mathematical literacy includes learning to read and write different types of mathematical texts as part of purposeful mathematical meaning making. Thus in this article, we describe how learning to read and write mathematical texts (proof text, algorithmic text, algebraic/symbolic text, and visual text) supports the development of students'…

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…

Transitioning from teaching whole number operations to teaching fraction operations can prove difficult, even for the seasoned mathematics teacher. However, with effective literacy practices, teachers can seamlessly shift their students to learning the rules for fractions. The implications can be a mastery of mathematical language used to describe…

Disciplinary literacy focuses on the specific ways a content area thinks, uses language, and shares information. While much of the literature on disciplinary literacy suggests it is an advanced language strategy to be taught to secondary students, early childhood classrooms may be the ideal environment in which to introduce this type of…

The purpose of this study is to examine how fifth grade students were impacted by the infusion of multiple writing tasks in mathematics. In this study, writing tasks provided opportunities for students to communicate prior knowledge, share ideas to construct and justify arguments, for reflection, and assessment. In this deductive qualitative…

Although writing in mathematics has been advocated in practitioner journals, policy documents, and various research, surveys of mathematics teachers between 1988 and 2008 in various English-speaking countries have reported relatively infrequent incorporation into mathematics lessons. Further, much of prior survey research has yielded only…