Writing To Learn.. In Math

I'm going to start out by saying my students write to learn with every quiz or test and every homework assignment  without knowing it. With every quiz and test they have to make corrections and explain why they missed what they missed or how they know the new answer is correct. They were given the expectation that they will complete corrections this way, or they would not get credit. Just an answer with no explanation does not get them credit. My Pre-Calculus students are better at explaining themselves than my Advanced Functions students. Sometimes the AFM kids try to get away with "I forgot how to do it." or "I plugged it in the calculator wrong."

In Pre-Calculus we are learning about Vectors. This Physics related topic always has at least one question on the NC Final Exam but with Fridays gone and the personalities of our lovely juniors, it's going to be a struggle to get through this in the time allotted. Vectors have many fun applications and there are many different things that can be done with them. The past 2 days, we've done Vector Stations. One station, they were a human vector. They had to walk the path of a vector, draw it out on their paper, then discuss if the order in which they followed the directions mattered. In another station, they had to follow directions in order to find "treasure" on a pirate treasure map. In another station, they had to solve some word problems that dealt with airplanes and wind and swimming with water currents. In the last station, they watched a video dealing with vectors in the NFL and read an article with some applications. In this station, they filled out the chart in this packet while they watched the video. Then, they read the article and made comments (the directions were "If you think it, write it. Even if it's "Oh! That's pretty cool."). They switched papers and made comments on their comments (like we did in our PD). Some students did really well, while other students were saying things like "I didn't know what to write." or "I didn't think anything about this." My response was "Did you really read it and try?"

I think it's still hard for students to understand why there is writing and even reading in a math class. I just had to get up to explain something they could have found out by reading the directions. They've had that problem a lot lately. That and "I don't know how to do this." Okay, well have you even thought about it? No. Hmmm...


I'll admit, the article didn't have a lot of content in it, so maybe they didn't think a whole lot about it. Even when I read the article and even the book, I don't have a lot of comments to make. I can definitely relate with them in that they don't like to read in math. This group also thinks way too much into things. I was just asked "What do you mean make a comment on their comment?"  I mean exactly what I said. There's constantly heated "academic discussions" on who is correct in solving the problem. It usually ends up in they're both right.. they're just not listening to one another and fully understanding one another. Sometimes they're too smart for their own good.....