Writing to Learn Mathematics: Strategies That Work, K-12

Investigating interesting problems about the world makes mathematics compelling and engaging, but many students experience math as simply a set of rules and procedures to memorize and repeat on tests. Writing, however, frees students of the idea that mathematics is a collection of right answers owned by teachers.

In Writing to Learn Mathematics, Joan Countryman demonstrates how you can dramatically improve students' reasoning capabilities using:

• journals
• learning logs
• letters
• autobiographies
• investigations
• formal papers.

The text provides descriptions of writing activities that classroom teachers can use to enhance the learning of math and includes examples of student writing, from short journal entries to excerpts from longer research papers. Most helpful are the topics suggested to explore at different levels of the primary and secondary mathematics curriculum, including descriptions of student responses to these presentations.

Readers of Writing to Learn Mathematics will discover how writing can help students develop concepts and thinking skills as well as free them to recognize what they know--and what they want to explore.

Joan Countryman is assistant head for academic planning at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, where she has taught mathematics since 1970, and is a lecturer at the Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania. Since 1985 she has worked with the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation as a master teacher in a program offering summer institutes for secondary mathematics teachers. Joan has lectured extensively on new trends in elementary and secondary mathematics education, on gender and mathematics, and on the use of writing in mathematics classes. Her approach to teaching and learning mathematics is described by William Zinsser in a chapter of book, Writing to Learn.