Adressing comprehension
The problem in the video is used to demonstrate how teachers can assist students who have difficulties with the comprehension of written problems in mathematics:
| Natalie paddled 402 km of the Murray River in her canoe over 6 days. She paddled the same distance each day. How far did Natalie paddle each day? |
What can a teacher do in the mathematics classroom with a student who has difficulty with comprehending mathematics problems?
Focus on language features
Students need to be familiar with a range of mathematical texts and understand the language, features and grammar of these texts. For example, knowing that what needs to be worked out often appears as a question at the end of the problem may assist students to read and understand the problem.
Discuss Cloze passages
While being of limited benefit when attempted individually, Cloze passages can be used for a guided discussion, in which students identify how different words change the meaning of a problem. To be able to maintain meaning while reading a text, a student needs to be able to read over 90% of it, therefore blanking out more than 10% of the words in a Cloze passage turns it into an illegible text for many students. This means that in a problem such as the one quoted above, no more than three words should be blanked out. Generally, the blanked out words should be prepositions and conjunctions, rather than nouns, as they have a greater effect on the meaning of the text.
Reassemble texts
Another useful strategy is to present to the students the text of a problem cut up into separate strips of paper and have the students order these to reconstruct the text. For example:
| Natalie |
| This strip can later be used to discuss with students that, because this is someone's name, it is not necessary, in the context of the problem, to be able to read it. |
The next three strips can later be used to discuss how to represent each one of the terms of the problem.
| paddled 402 km of the Murray River |
'Murray River' can also be identified as a noun that can be understood without needing to be able to read it. |
| in her canoe over 6 days |
| She paddled the same distance each day. |
| How far did Natalie paddle each day? |
This strip can be used later to discuss the location of a question in a mathematics word problem. |
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