Comprehending Math: Adapting Reading Strategies to Teach Mathematics, K-6

by Ellin Oliver Keene

For those who devour Comprehending Math as I did, their teaching will be clearer, bolder, more connected. And for the ultimate beneficiaries, they will have a chance to understand just how integrally our world is connected.
Ellin Oliver Keene, author of Mosaic of Thought No matter the content area, students need to develop clear ways of thinking about and understanding what they learn. But this kind of conceptual thinking seems more difficult in math than in language arts and social studies. Fortunately we now know how to help kids understand more about mathematics than ever before, and in Comprehending Math youll find out that much of maths conceptual difficulty can be alleviated by adapting what we have learned from research on language and cognition. In Comprehending Math Arthur Hyde (coauthor of the popular Best Practice ) shows you how to adapt some of your favorite and most effective reading comprehension strategies to help your students with important mathematical concepts. Emphasizing problem solving, Hyde and his colleagues demonstrate how to build into your practice math-based variations He then presents a practical way to "braid" together reading comprehension, math problemsolving, and thinking to improve math teaching and learning. Elaborating on this braided model of approach to problem solving, he shows how it can support planning as well as instruction. Comprehending Math is based on current cognitive research and features more than three dozen examples that range from traditional story problems to open-ended or extended-response problems and mathematical tasks. It gives you step-by-step ideas for instruction and smart, specific advice on planning strategy-based teaching. Help students do math and get it at the same time. Read Comprehending Math , use its adaptations of familiar language arts strategies, and discover how deeply students can understand math concepts and how well they can use that knowledge to solve problems.

Genres: Education, Teaching

200 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2006

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Comprehending Math, Arthur Hyde takes some complex ideas from cognitive science and reading comprehension instruction and applies it to the teaching of math in a way that is coherent and practical. He provides a rather complex framework that a teacher can scaffold into their daily routines of teaching mathematics in a way that will help students build understanding not just memorize algorithms.

The book does need to be read in it entirety to fully appreciate the complexity of Hyde's Braid Model (He braids language, cognition, and mathematics). That said once you understand the model, it is an important part of using well designed and problematic tasks in mathematics. It makes a powerful compliment to the ideas outlined by John Van de Walle in his Teaching Student-Centered Mathematics and by all of the authors in Making Sense: Teaching and Learning Mathematics with Understanding.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book really helped me to connect a lot of ideas about thinking strategy instruction with ideas about building students' problem-solving power. It also helped me think through more ways I can team with my literacy teacher in stretching writing across the curriculum. I still want more ideas about how to create more choices of 'text' in the math classroom, like what reading teachers can do with the thinking strategies, but this book didn't promise that, so it wasn't a total let-down not to find many ideas along these lines. It's definitely one of my top three must-reads for math teachers.

[Letitia]

I starting reading this book to help mentor another teacher in math but now I find myself reading beyind the section I needed. Reading the book so far I see a better connection between math and the metacognitive processes that we think we do 'naturally'. WOW! I wish I had explained the more why behiind math skills so students understand when and why to use certain strategies in problem solving. I like the book so far!

[Erin Stuhlsatz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was super interesting!

Hyde uses an approach to math teaching that is almost completely based on group problem-solving. A classroom would work on one big open-ended problem so that everybody gets to explore the concepts without using an algorithm to simply find the 'right answer'. The teacher's role is to provide the question and then to guide the discussion without enforcing her own ideas about the concept or the kids' methods for doing it.

[Ren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This man has thought a TON about teaching math and many components of his "KWC" approach are directly applicable. This is a great companion to Mosaic of Thought because he really applies the same concepts for teaching reading to math - cool! A bit wordy or overdone at time, but in general solid. Would be a nice companion to Fosnot and Dolk's "Mathematizing" work.

[Karina · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVE THIS BOOK. Great read about using reading strategies to help students understand the genre of math problems. I appreciate the emphasis on reasoning, patterns, logic over procedure. Good suggested activities, real teacher anecdotes. Also enjoyed the student sample work.

Overall, great reminder that we are growing mathematicians, not computers.

[Katrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Has to do with a Problem Solving class I'm taking through my district. Interesting stuff so far.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Life changing! (for teachers) Really amazing, thought-provoking, systems-thinking ways of teaching, not just about math. Loved it.

[Morgan Aiello · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down the best book I've ever read about math and how to best teach problem solving/word problems/tasks!