Last week we read the article Using Creative Writing and Literature in Mathematics Classes. I really liked the idea of interdisciplinary teaching and this article gave a suggestion to do so. I know this post is about an article I read last week, but we talked about it in class today....and I really enjoyed the article. While the lesson is very creative and the examples of student work in the text was very good, I do have a few concerns. My biggest concern is for the students who lack writing skills (such as ELL or SPED students.) For students who love math, but not writing, this lesson might have them running in the other direction. In our group we talked about the idea of allowing students to work on this particular assignment in pairs. The thought of having students work in pairs brought up a good conversation. Obviously we could pairs up students who loved math with another student who loves writing. However, we would need some sort of control on how the students get paired up. The highest student in the class should not be paired up with the lowest student. Also, how do we group our students without the students really noticing and/or figuring out our methods?
My other concern is the assessment piece. I think this lesson is great as long as teachers are being careful with the assessment piece; I wouldn't want to assess students' math skills based off of a writing sample. This could possibly drop the math scores for those students who are not good at writing and vice versa if this lesson was presented in a literacy class.
Tangrams!!! The article for this week was about using manipulatives in upper grades. After using the tangrams in class this week, I have to say that I think it is a great idea....
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