Reading & Writing in Math—With a Turkey Twist!

Even though I am a math education specialist, I focus on both math and ELA concepts. With reading skills, students can better assess what a math problem is asking. With writing skills, they can reinforce mathematical understanding. In my classroom, I require students to convince me of their answers with written responses, not just calculations.

Since Thanksgiving is coming up, I decided to use a DynaMath article about turkey populations in New England (gobble, gobble!). In the activity, students read various real-world facts about turkeys. Then, they’re asked to write what they observe and create their own word problem. In total, it took about 15 minutes.

First, we read the article together as a class. This led to a dialogue, where students discussed what they read and asked questions. They wrote their thoughts in their math journals, which I use for formative assessment, where I provide feedback but not a letter grade.

Students observed things like differences in adult turkey weights and turkey populations by state. After analyzing the data, they were challenged to create their own word problems. Below is a student example.

In all, students found the activity to be engaging and fun. Here are my key learnings from this math writing activity:

• Students enjoy writing about real-world topics that interest them, even in math class.
• Engagement was at a high when students could write and solve each other’s word problems.
• This was a good opportunity to reinforce writing skills. Students had to make sure they had enough key information so partners could successfully solve the problems. And they were encouraged to have neat handwriting too!
• Next time, I’d use Google Slides to post all of the student work so each student has an opportunity to answer their classmate’s problem.