Lack of Literacy in Math
“Turn to page 53, read the scenario, and using words only, write our what steps you would take to solve this problem.” That was what my Warm Up (quick task to get the student settled and involved for class) said when my freshmen class walked in. After they took their seats, stated the assignment, I walked around, monitoring their progress and answered any topic related questions. Everybody is working diligently, and extra quiet, when a hand pops up. “Yes Tre?”,I said. “What does Sam drove 4 times more than Vance but 2 times less than Mike mean?”
I know my face said everything I wanted to say. So before I responded, I took a deep breath, read the scenario again myself, and walked to where Tre was sitting. To my surprise, Tre wasn’t the only students stunned by the scenario as six more students yelled “yeah whats 2 times less than mean?”. I nearly fell to the floor because I thought this was probably the easiest scenario to get them started on word problems. I was absolutely wrong, again. My students didn’t understand the word problem.
As shocked as I was this day, I knew I couldn’t freeze up. So I went to the board and underlined every key word in the scenario. One by one we unfolded the statements and turned them into numbers and variables.
Quickly, I learned that students may understand the numbers side, but turning words into numbers was a challenge. As easy as I thought the assignment was, some of the students were hindered by the lack of literacy, therefore, simply unraveling the text to create an expression was impossible. Going forward, I didn’t start a lesson off with a word problem until I knew that every student was able to read, understand and formulate expressions using the literacy skills and mathematic skills they had already acquired previously.
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