Writing in the Disciplines: How Math Fits Into the Equation

Abstract

Understanding the types of and purposes for elementary mathematical writing can provide a framework to guide mathematical writing instruction.

Investigation of Students' Cognitive Learning in Mathematics Lessons Supported with Writing Activities

“…It has been stated that students should be able to reflect on these, choose and apply appropriate strategies, assess the rationality of their solutions, and trace their developmental process (Silver & Smith, 1996;Klishis, 2003). Colonnese, Amspaugh, LeMay, Evans and Field (2018) categorized writing that could be used for communication and reasoning at primary school level into four types: exploratory, expository, persuasive, and creative. They consider students' responses given to such question as -Why do we use fractions?‖ to explain their discovery of the concept of fraction as exploratory writing, while students' written responses to such an instruction as -Explain how you know that one third of a play area is bigger than one third of a pavement area‖ are considered expository writing.…”

“I just want to word it better”: developing disciplinary literacies in an after-school spoken word poetry team

“…In the case of writing, a disciplinary lens challenges the assumption that "writing knowledge is general, such that what English teachers teach is sufficient to educate kids about writing, no matter what the task or community of practice it engages," an assumption which Smagorinsky (2015, p. 141) admonishes. In the literature concerning writing through a disciplinary lens, scholars address the role of writing in subjects outside ELA, such as ETPC 21,1 history and math (de la Paz et al, 2016;Colonnese et al, 2018), but research in ELA is more likely to focus on reading. Where scholars do address writing in ELA settings, it is primarily in the context of literary analyses (Rainey, 2016;Reynolds et al, 2020).…”