Addressing reading
The problem in the video is used to demonstrate how teachers can assist students who have difficulties with the reading 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 reading mathematics problems?
The task for the teacher in the mathematics classroom is to teach the student to read the particular text under consideration.
Provide an orientation
Students who have difficulty with reading find it hard to establish a context for a particular text, predict its grammatical structure, predict the meaning of the text and anticipate words that are likely to occur within it. To assist these students, the teacher can provide an orientation to the text before they read the problem. The aim of the orientation is to make the students aware of:
1. the story in which the problem is embedded,
2. the context of the problem,
3. unusual language, likely to cause difficulties for the students,
4. mathematical words in the text of the problem.
'This is a problem about a girl who goes on a canoe trip on the Murray River' is a possible orientation to this problem, providing a context to it and enabling students to access unusual words that might be a stumbling block.
It is important that teachers do not read out the problem for the students, that they do not simplify the language of the problem or present an orientation that provides too much guidance to solve the problem.
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