It is fortunate for me that I had an excellent math teacher in my high school. He always assigned some basic questions before the lessons he would teach in other day. Since the questions were based on the new knowledge, then it pushed us to read the textbook in advance and to comprehend the content as much as possible. In class, he began with the explanation of mathematics vocabulary and gave us chances to practice understanding the relationship among multiple math modes. The insights learned from his classes are that reading math textbook does assist students in comprehending the content and that practice makes perfect. “We should not underestimate the importance of our students being able to understand the language and logic of mathematics as captured in mathematics textbooks” (Lee & Spratley, 2010). In my opinion, it is not that students cannot totally understand the math content on their own, but that they are kind of afraid of reading math textbooks by themselves, which gradually forms the dependence on teachers or class teaching. If students do not have a try to think mathematically about solving math problems or understanding the definitions, they cannot “develop the capacity to access mathematics understandings independently, and then students become mired in a continuing cycle of dependency on a knowledgeable other” (Buehl, 2011). This continuing vicious cycle is of endless explanation and showing seem-to-get-it expression, which, in my eyes, is a waste of energy and time. Under this cycle, it becomes the common situation that students are often stuck in solving problems because the concepts are unclear to them and they cannot independently think about how to work on it.
It is interesting to see that “readers have to be flexible thinkers, able to adjust to these different informational modes constantly, and able to extract meaning from each” (Buehl, 2011), which I definitely agree with. Math is a language full of diverse texts, like symbols, graphs, functions, etc. The quick thinking transformation among those modes can be of great help of problem solving and comprehension. For example, both the unit circle and the graph of sine and cosine function can be a tool to solve the problems, but choosing one of them depends on the reader’s preference.
After reading all of the articles assigned for this week, “I do believe that readers read texts of one academic discipline in ways that are substantially different from the texts of other disciplines” (Buehl, 2011). As for me, I can be a quick thinker through a mathematics lens when reading math textbooks, which is a totally opposite situation when reading other literature. It seems a pressure on secondary students that they have to force themselves to switch the reading modes in mind as reading diverse disciplinary literatures, but who cannot say such a switch is not important to each disciplinary knowledge though a unique disciplinary lens.
I really enjoyed reading your blog. I had been through the same experience. I still find reading literature text challenging. While I find reading science and math texts are not problem at all. The reason I have this difficulty reading literature texts is my English language proficiency since I have been an English language learner for only 4 years. I think the process of developing language proficiency is similar to the process of developing literacy. Both processes require time and practice. A student who is not literate in a specific subject area faces the same difficulty an English language learner faces when he/she is trying to read a text in a language different than his/ her native language. When I read what you have said about your math teacher in your high school, I remembered my biology and chemistry teacher in high school. They were a real role model for me. They cared about their students. They helped me as a student to read and write in science efficiently. These experiences highlight the importance of teachers as role models to students and how these experiences may determine student’s future and career goals. I am glad you brought up the dependency issue. I think sometimes the students develop dependency on their teacher, and they don’t even try to read the text book because the teacher instruction and presenting of the materials are sufficient for them to comprehend the materials, so the students do not need to go back to the text book. I think It is the responsibility of teachers to reduce this dependency and help students to read and comprehend the text book on their own by teaching them literacy practice along with the content knowledge.
ReplyDeleteHi Hadeel,
DeleteI am glad that you enjoyed my blog post. As language learners whose first language is not English, I think many of us are struggling with reading literature texts since the understanding is based on our vocabulary knowledge and cultural background, so math and science can be kind of "easy" disciplinary readings to understand because of their texture. And I agree with you that teachers should be as role models for students, and also I want to be such a role model for my students in the future! Even though teachers have more responsibilities to help students get rid of dependency on learning, the main responsibility, I think, should be taken by students themselves, as the idiom said, you can lead the horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.
Shuqin,
ReplyDeleteI was drawn to your post by the meme at the top because that is exactly how I always felt in high school when opening up what seemed to be my 50 pound math textbook, which now that I think about it, could be another source of anxiety for students when approaching math. Also, when I was taking math in high school, I always thought that the only real purpose of the textbook was to do my homework from the practice questions in there. Otherwise, I never actually tried to read the process of how to answer questions, I was the kid that depended on my teacher to teach me.
Another thing that really stood out to me was when you remembered your math class in high school and how your teacher always took a class period to explain math vocab and their relationship with different modes. This made me remember my own high school math teachers because the one thing that always bothered me in those classes was that my teachers always taught us math concepts and how to do problems the long way first. It was only until after the test that they taught us a short version to simply get the problem done. That always boggled my mind because I figured that if there was a faster way to solve a problem, why wouldn't our teacher just tell us that in the first place? After reading this and being in this class, I realize what my teachers were trying to do. Because even though it always bothered me, my basic comprehension of math concepts and relationships have really improved to the point that even though I'm a history major, I still help my friends with their calculus homework now.