Takeaway #3 – Writing In Math Class

You can imagine students’ reactions the first day in class when I introduced the idea of formal writing in math class. First came the initial shock. Some students thought I was joking. Then the reality set in and panic arose. I currently teach high school (10th, 11th, and 12th grades), and most of my students do not speak English as their first language. Writing terrifies most of them. As soon as they heard they were going to write essays in math class and were able to process what that meant, they freaked out. For most of my students, the only subject harder than Math is writing. Fortunately, my classroom was right next door to the high school English teacher’s, so I was able to meet with her and plan accordingly.

Getting students to write in a math class takes a lot of work, most of which falls on the teacher. Some questions that I had to work through and which I will discuss in this post are the following: 1) How do you engage students in the writing process? 2) How do you balance the validity of the student fears with the need to write across disciplines? 3) How does collaboration work within the writing process in math?

First, let’s examine how to engage students in the writing process. This is a little more challenging because of the subject area. In English, students sometimes are given the freedom to choose a topic to research or choose a theme of literature to examine. They can choose a topic that fits their interests and hobbies. This needs to be carried over to math writing as well, it just takes a little more intentionality. In my class, we had 3 types of writing. We had a common 1-page quick essay, a 2-3 page reflection, and a 6+ page research project. In my classroom, we also incorporate a lot of reading (more on this in future posts). We read excerpts from different books such as Ben Orlin’s Math with Bad Drawings or Medium articles about mathematics. Each week, they would read one excerpt and write a 1-page summary about it. These were often fun and engaging topics that were light-hearted and low-stress. After a few weeks of these, we built up to a longer essay of 2-3 pages. We spent a few weeks reading about how different groups view mathematics. We looked at how mathematicians, teachers, students, and scientists all see mathematics. To conclude this, I had students write a 2-3 page self-view of mathematics. They really enjoyed the openness of the assignment, and I was able to get insight into how my students view mathematics.

I also made sure to have my longer essays assigned at a time that they were not doing a major writing assignment in English. By coordinating with other teachers, we were able to balance their workload and not overwhelm them with writing.

One thing that I tried this year, and will hopefully do more often next year, is collaborative essays. My Pre-Calculus Trigonometry Essay was collaborative. That meant that 2-3 students worked on the same essay. This helped ease student stresses because even though it was 6+ pages, having two people work on it helped. I did have to pair students in groups so that each group was balanced and one person did not do the whole assignment. Having students work together on this allowed them to communicate, learn from their mistakes, and fix misconceptions in the writing process. 

This past year was the first year that I have incorporated writing on a large scale in my classroom, and it went better than I thought it would. Looking back, I am glad I started it. Many things did not go as planned, but at the same time, a lot of things went well. If you are interested in trying to have your students write in math and need help just reach out to me! Please let me know if you have any questions.