FInal Synthesis: Importance of Literacy

Going into this course, literacy was always something I expected was the responsibility of an ELA teacher. As a potential math teacher, I never thought of implementing literacy into the classroom and disregarded the importance of it. I always just thought of numbers and teaching numbers, so to be honest, I assumed this class would be somewhat pointless. However, as we went along in the course and learned the different strategies and concepts, my opinion about literacy changed and I actually think it’s extremely important for all teachers, no matter what content area the instructor is teaching, to implement literacy strategies in the classrooms. It’s like hitting two birds with one stone because the literacy strategies that we learned in the course is beneficial to both the content and enhancing reading skills. So, why not try?

There are definitely some strategies I would probably never use in a math class. One particular strategy would be book clubs. I honestly think book clubs are time consuming, and so with the amount of material to cover in a math class and the contents students are needing to learn, I think trying to do book clubs might be impossible. However, I think the concept of book clubs can be used in math classes if we tweaked it a little bit. For instance, instead of trying to do a full book, we can do small reading groups for a day or two with either articles, text, or even concept discussion. It’s always great to be able to discuss or explain topics to one another so the speaker can reorganize their thoughts and make sense of the material while the listener may learn from the speaker and/or reassure their physical knowledge. Another way that I may use it in a middle school math class is having reading groups for word problems. I think the groups will be extremely helpful for students to improve their problem-solving skills by discussing the word problem, breaking it down, and solving it together than doing it by themselves.

Another strategy that I think is extremely hard to implement in a math class are reading guides/maps. We’ve tried to create one in class using a middle school level math textbook, and honestly it was really hard. The reason being is because a lot of math textbooks for middle schools are so simple and straight to the point that its difficult to ignore any text on the page. There were some small points where we thought was unnecessary, but overall, we thought majority of the page should be read because they were basic definitions or great examples that will help students understand the concept. So, giving a reading guide for basic textbooks like that seemed pointless, in which I concluded that it’s not something I would ever use in my own classroom.

              Many other strategies that we talked about, such as turn and talk, KWL, exit slips, think alouds, and so forth, are definitely strategies I would use on a daily basis. I think these strategies will enhance students’ engagement and make the course more interactive, in which this is something I think is crucial in a math class. A lot of students struggle in math and it’s one of those unpopular subjects compared to the others. However, I think the most common reason for it is because students have a hard time understanding the concepts, teachers move too fast, and it’s boring. Even today, especially in the upper grade levels, several teachers teach math the traditional way – notes/lecture base classrooms. As a person who enjoys math, I would even hate it if math was always that boring. So, by incorporating these strategies, I think it will bring more joy in the classroom and lead students to be more engaged in the topic than it would be in a traditional one, and eventually, that would lead more students to actually understand the concepts and be successful in the course. Of course, that might not always be the case, but I don’t think there really would be any harm in trying it and testing if it would work for math as it does in other subjects.

              I think the biggest concept or strategy that I took out from this course is trying to make the lessons multi modal. As teachers and educators, we’re always reminded that it’s important to differentiate our classroom to benefit all students, but for me, that idea was something hard to grasp. I understand that there are different ways to teach the content in order to meet the needs of certain students, but the question that always lingered was, how can I differentiate the classroom to meet the needs of certain students while it also works for the majority? I didn’t really get how to mix the two. This is where this course played a big part because all the strategies that we used and activities that we’ve done, such as the text set assignment, really helped me wrap my head around this idea of differentiation and multi modal for all students. It all clicks and makes sense, and this course helped me realize that there are so many strategies out there that can be used even in a math classroom. I recognize that there isn’t a need to separate literacy strategies from a math classroom because some actually works in math and be useful for the students’ learning. So, although this was a class that I didn’t expect much from, I actually learned a whole lot and made me really reconsider the importance of literacy. It’s definitely something, as said multiple times, not to ignore and should try to be implemented in the classroom because literacy itself is so important for students to learn in any subject.

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