Rationale/Background
My passion and reasoning for creating my unit can be traced to two different conversations during my teaching journey. Both were conversations I had with family members who are also teachers—my sister and my cousin. My sister, who was a third grade teacher at the time, floored me during a conversation when she said very casually, “You know, prisons are built on third and fourth grade reading scores.” The other conversation was with my cousin (a reading specialist for our district) who explained the difficulties she faces trying to get non-language arts teachers to incorporate reading and writing into their curriculum.
According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the 4th grade will end up in jail or on welfare1. As a new teacher, I remember worrying about how I could help address this problem from an 8th grade math teacher’s viewpoint. All of the students’ that I serve are from the inner city of Richmond, VA, and live in households below the poverty level. These students are already several grade levels behind in math and English prior to entering the eighth grade. The NAAL research also shows that 85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate2 I have found this statistic to be plausible over my time teaching, as I often hear stories about former students going in and out of the juvenile system.
About four years before I had that conversation with my cousin, I decided to introduce more writing into my class as a result of attending district-wide and school-wide professional development programs. Our district administrators and specialists stressed the importance of how reading and writing should not be restricted to only the language arts teachers and their curriculum, but used by all teachers in a cross-curricular approach. I believe that reading and writing strategies can and should be used to improve both mathematics and reading skills. Our math specialist discussed the importance of embedding reading and writing activities and assignments into our math lesson plans. I consulted with a few close friends among the English teachers at my school to figure out how to proceed with implementing the recommendations I had heard in my professional development. I started out by having my students journal their past experiences (positive and negative) in math class. I allowed them to journal about “good” and “bad” math teachers, content, activities… anything that would get them writing about math. I still do math journaling even though there is always resistance because the students do not want to “read or write” in math class! I am very patient with this process because I remember feeling the same way the students do when I was taking the necessary tests and courses to qualify for a teaching license.
I remember struggling with only one particular test when I switched careers into education—the Reading for Virginia Educators: Elementary and Special Education (RVE). This is the test required to teach special education or elementary school in Virginia. I failed the RVE twice and remember thinking, “I’m not a reading teacher, all I want to do is teach math.” I eventually sought the help of my coworker and my cousin. I passed the test, but at the time I could not understand why secondary special education teachers not teaching reading had to take the RVE exam. However, I recalled the conversation with my cousin and the light bulb turned on. I started to realize the importance of requiring all core special education teachers to know how to teach literacy development. It made perfect sense that reading strategies should be understood and taught in all core content areas, especially math. I was also thinking that all teachers, regardless of whether they are special education or elementary, should be able to help students with reading and writing strategies. As we were talking, I was recounting all the times that my students were able to solve problems with rote algorithms, but then struggled tremendously when presented with a word problem.
Some say math is a language. If this is true, then teaching strategies for solving math word problems is comparable to teaching two languages—math and English—in one setting. What are a teacher, and student, to do if they are not proficient in the English language and math? I sought help from veteran teachers about strategies they used when teaching word problems. Some teachers admitted that they avoided word problems because of the grave deficits in reading and lack of basic math skills. I have decided that this is exactly the wrong thing to do. This is running from the problem. Some teachers recommended shortcuts to ease the pain for students solving word problems by highlighting or boxing key information, but that strategy does not address the reading comprehension issues. The frustration of time constraints for teaching certain objectives also prevents them from covering word problems more in-depth.
This unit will focus solely on developing one-step (addition/subtraction) mathematical word problems for struggling readers at the lowest reading levels. This foundation will allow me to build the confidence and ability of struggling readers. The future goal, which I will assess as the year progresses, is to have students solve more complicated math word problems with increased reading complexities. Many word problems can be solved without writing any equations, and this approach will be encouraged throughout this unit. Helping students solve some these problems before introducing variables and equations can make that task easier. There will be additional resources and references in the appendix that have proven valuable. A long term goal that I will implement is to eventually have a second phase where the mathematical structure gets more difficult. The end goal is for students who struggle with literacy deficits to increase their ability to read, fully comprehend the word problem, and correctly solve the problem.
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