Developing Mathematical Literacy Through Adolescent Literature

Giving students opportunities to read like mathematicians as they explore content has the potential to move their thinking and understandings in monumental ways. Each chapter presented in this volume provides readers with approaches and activities for pairing a young adult novel with specific mathematics concepts. Chapters include several instructional activities for before, during, and after reading as well as extension activities that move beyond the text as students continue to develop mathematical literacy.

This text offers 6th - 12th grade educators guided instructional approaches for including young adult (YA) literature in science and math classes in order to promote literacy development while learning content. Chapters are co-authored, pairing content experts with literacy experts, to ensure that both content and literacy standards are met in each approach. Each chapter spotlights the reading of one YA novel, and offer pre-, during-, and after reading activities that guide students to a deeper understanding of the content while increasing their literacy practices. While each chapter focuses on a specific content topic, readers will discover the many opportunities reading YA literature in the content area has in encouraging cross-disciplinary study.

It is vital for educators to be aware of how traumatic experiences affect today’s students, yet few teachers learn the tools needed to successfully teach these students. This book highlights how English Language Arts teachers, who are typically not licensed or specifically trained to work with trauma issues, can design and implement instruction that helps students see that they are supported. This book provides specific strategies for teaching literacy based on the authors’ extensive knowledge and experience in trauma-sensitive instruction, adolescent literacy, and culturally responsive–sustaining pedagogies. The authors show how to support middle and high school students with specific literacy practices (reading, speaking, listening, and writing) that build resilience. Trauma-Sensitive Literacy Instruction is for the many teachers who are unsure how to invite students and their traumas into classroom instruction and embed critical discussions and learning within their teaching practices and pedagogy. It will help ELA teachers navigate student trauma in a way that empowers both students and teachers. Book Features: Responds to research that consistently shows how schools are often places that marginalize—and sometimes traumatize or retraumatize—children. Offers specific information related to literature, writing, discussion, and inquiry activities focused on various traumatic experiences. Provides rationales and research, along with examples, teacher vignettes, and steps for incorporating relevant practices in classrooms (grades 6–12). “In this book, ELA teachers will find actionable pedagogical practices toward the transformative teaching trauma demands and the respect, care, and support along the way that ELA educators need and deserve.” —From the Foreword by Elizabeth Dutro, professor, University of Colorado Boulder

Virtually all national standards now require students and teachers to understand the particulars of disciplinary literacy. But recently emerging scholarship suggests that disciplinary literacy is, by itself, an incomplete and potentially problematic approach to secondary literacy instruction. By asking students to “think like” or even “be like” experts, students may receive implicit messaging about whose knowledge is—and isn’t—valued. Critical disciplinary literacy (CDL) creates space for, and highlights connections between, critical literacies and disciplinary literacies. CDL acknowledges disciplines as unique communities with their own specialized (and often exclusionary) skills, norms, practices, and discourses, but deviates from conventional applications of disciplinary literacy by responding to the ways in which power systems and the analytic skills needed to understand them work differently based on the disciplines at hand. A CDL instructional approach acknowledges that applying the critical literacy skills of “reading the word and the world” to understand the power dynamics of vaccine distributions requires a different skill set and strategy approach than looking at textual representations of masculinity in Romeo and Juliet. Written by a team of educators with over 70 combined years of classroom experience, Power Tools: 30 Critical Disciplinary Literacy Strategies for 6–12 Classrooms offers readers research-based, multidisciplinary, ready-to-implement disciplinary literacy strategies from critical literacy lenses. The book sets itself apart from other strategy textbooks by offering creative strategy implementation that calls attention to power systems. Educators can learn, for example, how they might employ read-alouds to explore the global refugee crisis, or use the exit ticket strategy to help students reflect on the relationship between race and COVID statistics/experiences. Power Tools: 30 Critical Disciplinary Literacy Strategies for 6–12 Classrooms provides standards-aligned lessons that both challenge and extend traditional engagement practices to build a more just world. Each chapter includes: An overview of each strategy, situated within the research of best practices; Two disciplinary examples for each CDL strategy (e.g., an example of a CDL think-aloud in seventh grade math and tenth grade ELA classroom). Chapters provide resources such as examples of student work, discussion prompts, dialogue between teacher and students, and reprintables; Ideas for addressing resistance to CDL instruction. Preservice and in-service teachers, as well as teacher educators and researchers, looking to do and support justice-oriented work in disciplinary spaces will find value in the book. Power Tools is an ideal text to implement in courses such as Disciplinary Literacy, Secondary Literacy, Content Area Literacy, Methods/Strategies for Teaching Social Justice, Multicultural Education, ELA methods, Science methods, Social Studies methods, and Mathematics methods.

Language and communication are important to mathematics just as they are to the other content areas. Mathematical Literacy is a powerful resource that introduces you to a wide spectrum of strategies and approaches for building students' facility in mathematical communication. Mathematical Literacy demonstrates how immersion in the language of math supports improved learning through traditional communication skills such as: reading writing speaking listening as well as math-specific communication skills, including: symbolizing graphing creating diagrams using tables. It provides everything you need to increase the presence of mathematical language in your classroom, guiding you through the ample research base and theoretical underpinnings supporting its ideas, demonstrating implementation through detailed classroom vignettes, and presenting ready-to-use tools and activities that connect theory directly to practice. Whether you are an individual preservice or practicing teacher, part of a teacher book-study group, or creating whole-staff professional learning, Mathematical Literacy promotes professional learning with questions interspersed throughout that encourage reflection and prompt you to action. It offers many paths for teachers to take as they help students to improve their use of mathematical language and grow as mathematicians. Help every student become fluent readers, speakers, and writers of mathematics. Read Mathematical Literacy and give young adolescents new ways to explain their reasoning, make connections, debate their thinking with peers, and share their struggles - in short to understand mathematics deeply.

Use children's literature as a springboard to successful mathematical literacy. This book contains summaries of books, each related to the NCTM Standards, that will help children gain familiarity with and an understanding of mathematical concepts. Each chapter has classroom-tested activities and a bibliography of additional books to further expand student learning.

Suggests reading materials to use in conjunction with the teaching of mathematical concepts and activities

Technology is constantly evolving and can now aid society with the quest for knowledge in education systems. It is important to integrate the most recent technological advances into curriculums and classrooms, so the learning process can evolve just as technology has done. The Handbook of Research on Transformative Digital Content and Learning Technologies provides fresh insight into the most recent advancements and issues regarding educational technologies in contemporary classroom environments. Featuring detailed coverage on a variety of topics, such as mobile technology integration, ICT literacy integration, digital wellness, online group counseling, and distance learning, this publication will appeal to researchers and practitioners who are interested in discovering more about technological integration in education.