We Should Teach Math Like it's a Language

For my resource blog, I found an article titled "We Should Teach Math Like it's a Language”, written by Jeannine Diddle Uzzi. This article stood out to me because of its title. Math as a language? That just does not seem write. But as I kept reading the article, I realized that it makes complete sense. Jeannine compares learning math to learning Latin. At first I was skeptical, but the idea that math builds on itself might seem obvious but in hindsight, this is one of the reasons why students have such a hard time with math. One problem that is evident in our higher education system for the United States is that “instead of encouraging them to start anew in order to reinforce their skills, we test them, label that review ‘remedial,’ and withhold college credit from them,” (Uzzi, 2018). This turns many students away and gives them the idea they are not good enough to take a higher level math. This process of throwing students in “remedial” courses and discouraging them from taking other higher-level math classes is a main reason why we are seeing less and less students follow the path of math-lead careers, including math teaching of any level. 

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https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2018/05/30/we-should-teach-math-like-its-a.html

Synthesis Blog #1

Chapter 2 of Subjects Matter talks about the difficulties we face when exploring a child's understanding of reading comprehension. The short excerpt that I read opened my eyes to the different ideas of reading comprehension and how we are so quick to judge a child for not understanding the text. Growing up in the Common Core Standards of schooling and curriculum, I understand what it means when the author explains why it is difficult for kids to really comprehend the texts they are reading. We were taught the important part of learning something was getting the question right instead of actually understanding what the text meant and retaining the information we were given. Now that we are able to learn from our mistakes, we are able to actually see the importance of understanding and comprehending instead of memorizing and dumbing the information when we are done with it. This provides teachers with a very helpful ability to give students tools for success they will use for the rest of their lives. This excerpt continues explaining multiple strategies we as teachers can use to help kids better understand the texts they are reading, including "Thinking Strategies of Effective Readers" and the "Columbus Key". Throughout my 20 years on this planet I have never heard of those two tips for reading, but now that I understand what they are I wish I would have heard of them sooner. These strategies have the ability to give our future students a tool that can help them decipher anything you put in front of them. I believe this is the future of teaching and the advancement of teaching in our society has given us the ability to change our students' future and the future of our world. 


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The Jungle Book

Today I read The Jungle Book by Jennifer Adams for my Professor's daughter named Arya. The Jungle Book explores the different characters found in the movie and gives a small description about each of the animals. Hopefully Arya enjoys the book as much as I enjoyed the movie when I watched it!






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