Many teachers–and students–still think of mathematics as a totally separate subject from literacy. This workshop will show a myriad of ways in which literacy and math are connected, and provide engaging and practical ways to take advantage of these connections in teaching. The realities of classroom practice, insights from research, a reflective approach, and a heavy measure of creativity are combined to develop innovative frameworks and practices that can take mathematics and literacy education to the next level. Teachers need to truly understand that literacy education is about so much more than traditional reading and writing instruction. My goal is to help teachers break down some of the artificial boundaries that constrain their teaching, and their students’ learning.
Incorporating math content into the language arts block helps students gain skills for reading many kinds of texts. And bringing reading, writing, and talking into the math classroom supports the development of conceptual knowledge and problem solving, in addition to computational skills. I will base the training on the needs of your teachers and their level of understanding of integrated instruction and give teachers the tools to make it a reality. The training is firmly grounded in current best practices for both language arts and math. The session will include planning advice, learning activities, assessment strategies, and resources, plus a wealth of examples from actual classrooms.
This is a practical workshop with hands-on activities for the classroom teacher in mind. It includes numerous examples of what mathematical discourse sounds like at a variety of grade levels. Teachers will have the opportunity to design literature based problem solving activities from a number of different books. Many elementary teachers are more comfortable teaching literacy; this workshop will build the needed bridges between literacy and the language of math.
