Math teachers have a great deal to fit into a class period. Brief writing can help students explain their thinking while they work through the mathematics.
The Five-Part Lesson Framework offers a sequence you can adapt to your course and class length:
- Launch: Present a problem or idea and invite students to notice or predict.
- Write: Pause for a short explanation of a choice, step, or question.
- Compare: Have partners discuss a useful difference between their explanations.
- Revise: Give students a chance to clarify one part of their thinking.
- Check: Collect a brief final explanation or question to guide what comes next.
Each writing moment can be short. The goal is to hear more of the reasoning behind students’ answers and give them a chance to strengthen an explanation.
[VIEW THE FIVE-PART LESSON FRAMEWORK — LINK TO UPLOADED PDF]
Explore the book
Writing to Learn Math in Class develops fuller lesson models, strategies, and planning guidance for teachers working with teens and adult learners.
EXPLORE THE BOOK — LINK TO LUMINESCENCE LLC
Could this sequence fit your class? I’d enjoy hearing what course you teach and how long your usual class period is.
FYI
I, an English teacher, compiled much of this handbook while pursuing a master’s degree. I’d attended the National Writing Project summer camp and heard that writing by hand helps students retain what they learn. So, I decided to conduct field tests in two distinct settings with Algebra I teachers who consented to utilize various strategies to see if they worked in a private parochial school and a public school with many international students and sons and daughters of military personnel undergoing basic training.
Two years ago, when I had the opportunity to mentor a new math teacher at a local high school who had been hired to teach Geometry with no prior pedagogical coursework, I pulled out the booklet and shared strategies with her. They worked! And she has continued to use them and recognizing that teaching is more than tell, this young person returned in classes to get academic pedagogical coursework at the university.
Anna J. Small Roseboro, NBCT and NWP Fellow